Farewell to Tomsk....

Well today turns out to be our last day in Tomsk, we got Malachi's passport!!! Today started out like any other day in Tomsk, 5am chatting with back home, checking email, facebook and blog comments and making sure the world hadn't fallen apart while we slept. Turns out it didnt. We treated today as if it would be our last day so today was the day when we brought gifts for the baby house staff and the kids in Malachi's room. We stopped at a flower shop before getting to the baby house for two plants for the director and one of Malachi's social workers. We started our visit with a conversation with the director about Malachi's schedule and a few questions we had about medicine, food, and sleeping habits. After this we went up and we got to see the room where he sleeps. Pretty cute, there were 12 little beds perfectly aligned in a grid (pictures below). Malachi's bed was in the back corner near the heaters, we know he wasn't ever cold at night :). Even our unheated house will probably still be warmer then that, though. I also got to take some pictures of the room he and his group spend most of their time during the day. We also brought a bear for each one of the kids in his group and our idea was to have him hand them out. Strange enough for a two year old he wasn't really happy that we were giving him a toy and then making him give it away. We handed them all out and then he was sitting there without a bear, he looked really sad. Strangely enough he has had one in the bag we bring every day since the first day we got here and never once showed it more then 2 seconds of attention. I guess thats a 2 year old for you. After our morning visit we just headed back to the hotel for our afternoon rest until 4pm, and then do it all over again. The next visit would turn out to be our last!!! We knew that Katia (our coordinator for anyone just joining us) was going to make a call to the passpport agency at 5pm and 5pm could not come fast enough. We were playing with Malachi and we saw her pick up her phone and Barbara mouthed "passport!" to me, I agreed. She was on the phone for a few minutes and the answer transcended language, Katia hung up the phone, smiled and jumped up and down and came over and hugged us. I think it was good news! We finished up playing with Malachi and said bye to some of the caregivers in his group (one of the ones we really like was there tonight so that was nice) and then headed to the passport office. Tonight Katia was driving us and whenever she drives us she takes a different way through the back alleys of tomsk or something, not unsafe just seems very roundabout. It is kinda fun to see the houses and everyhing along this route, just to think that some of the houses there are well over 100 or 150 years old, and a good majority of them look it. The whole way i was waving bye to things I knew I would never see again. Goodbye soccer field, goodbye russian casino "Kaznho", goodbye strange power line tower in the middle of the road that traffice parts around, goodbye Tom river, and I think im going to miss you most of all Lenin statue. We got to the passport office and it was nice to just calmly walk up the stairs this time knowing that at the top of the stairs was a passport for a little boy with the last name Tank, wow. We got the passport and, we were warned about this but, his name was mispelled. They use a computer program to convert the names from Cyrillic to "english" letters. So his name on his passport is actually Melekay, sounds Hawaiian :). Since this was the last thing we needed before we left, our next stop was S7 airlines to change our flight from friday to tomorrow. We went last night to check on space on the flight and they said there are a lot of seats so it shouldnt be a problem to change them today. After our driver and Katia finish arguing with the lady behind the counter it ends up that most of the cheaper seats had since then sold out so they told us we had to pay 11400 Rubles (more then 400 dollars) to change our flight. At this point that didnt sound so bad, two days less here means two less days of hotel and two less days of driver so it turns out about the same. They asked us to sit down while they checked on some things. About 15 mins later they called us up and they had found two cheaper tickets! That saved us more then 10000 Rubles, outstanding! Next stop, the hotel to check out and pay and then pay for the driver and translator, and then we're done with Tomsk. Tomorrow starts at 540am for pick up, head to the baby house to pick up our SON and then head to the airport to finally leave Siberia. Until Moscow. :)