Hello from Amsterdam

Greetings from Holland! We are currently in Amsterdam, after flying from Lewiston to Seattle and then into Amsterdam. The flights were great - the only complaint was that we couldn't sleep very much because they kept feeding us! We were given 3 meals, drinks the entire way, an additional pretzel snack and watched two movies, plus a news-style show.

Our flight to Amsterdam was 9 hours long and took us "over the top" - we flew over the southern tip of Greenland and Iceland.

After landing in Amsterdam, we passed through passport control (just looked at our passports), collected our luggage and were out to greet my host family. There was no customs, or anything!

We drove from the city to the Olympic Stadium (1928 Olympics), parked and took the Strassenbahn (street car) into downtown. The weather was beautiful and we were able to walk around and see several churches, the Ann Frank house, beautiful gardens and more. We also took an hour long boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam.

Now we are at Dennis' apartment (my host sister Britta's boyfriend) which is about an hour from Amsterdam. It is a classical Dutch house - very narrow with steep staircase. It wouldn't even come close to meeting our building standards for stairs, but what character we miss!

We will fly to Kiev tomorrow morning, leaving at 11:15. We will arrive in Kiev at 3 PM, meet our friend Volodymyr, tour around the city for awhile, have dinner with our friends' cousins who serve as missionaries in Kiev, and then get on the overnight train to Odessa.

Not sure when we will be able to check in again, but will as soon as possible to update everyone! We are enjoying our little 10th anniversary vacation before our adoption begins. I think it is starting to sink in that our adoption is finally happening. On the Seattle-Amsterdam trip, we sat next to the cutest little 2-year-old girl. She was so well behaved! I kept thinking Anabella wouldn't ever have done that well, and how difficult it must be to travel long distances with children. Then, in the next thought, I realized that we might be doing that with up to 3 children within the next month!

The nervous and excited butterflies are definitely growing stronger as our NAC appointment approaches.

We are off to get some sleep. Both John and I pulled all-nighters (the last time we did that was college!) getting ready to leave on Thursday night. So, it is now Saturday morning according to our time clocks, and we have been up, with only minimal cat naps since 5 AM Thursday!

Love and greetings to all!

Kristen and John