Giving Up On Sasha: Photos and Video

In Russia: Day 8

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Dima feeding pigeons at the Lenin Library

Kids at the Kremlin

State Historical Museum, Kremlin, and St. Basil's Cathedral

Lighthouse Kids in Red Square

Lighthouse Kids in GUM Mall

Lighthouse Kids at Resurrection Gate, Leading into Red Square

Lighthouse Kids with Cossacks at State Historical Museum

Denis Reading at the Bookstore

Eliseevsky's Gastronom

Lighthouse Kids on Statue in Metro

Sasha, age 8, with Larisa

Video: Preveyet from Russia!

Giving Up On Sasha

In Moscow: Day 8

Yury Luzhkov had a brazen plan, and ever the politician, made an audacious promise to accompany it. Weary of the snow that falls on the country’s capital, and sick of the expense of cleanup, the mayor of Moscow decreed in mid-October that it would not snow in his fair city this winter. With the approval of the city council, Luzhkov hired the Russian Air Force to spray clouds outside Moscow, encouraging snow to fall before it reaches the city limits. We wake up Sunday morning to find Mr. Luzhkov no different than American politicians: full of expensive promises he can’t keep. A light blanket of snow has fallen, likely the first of many this winter, the mayor and the Russian Air Force’s attempts to control the weather notwithstanding.

We walk through Luzhkov’s snow to an English-language church service in an old theater school. Attended mainly by ex-pats, translation into Russian is provided via headset for Russian speakers. Midway through the service, the kids leave for children’s church, which Larisa translates for them. When our service ends, we find Larisa standing on a bench directing the entire class. Nothing in the scene surprises me; Larisa is a natural ringleader, no matter who’s involved. I shake my head in bemused wonderment. “We learned about the Christmas story,” is Larisa’s only explanation, as though it clears everything up. We lunch at a little café in one of the theater’s nooks and crannies. While the wait is insufferable, the food is tasty and inexpensive by Moscow standards. A sink on the café’s back wall substitutes for the napkins the café does not provide.

The metro whisks us to the city center and Kremlin. Along the way, we stop in front of the Lenin Library to feed pigeons. Anton, twelve, catches several and gives them carefully to other children. Some kids feed sunflower seeds to birds tame enough to eat out of their hands. We circle the Kremlin wall and honor Russia’s Unknown Soldier. Turning right, we climb a hill beside the State Historical Museum, and get our first glimpse of Krasnaya Ploschad, known to Americans as Red Square. At the far end of the square stands Russia’s most iconic symbol, gloriously flamboyant St. Basil’s Cathedral. It’s the ninth time I’ve seen it, but cresting the hill by the historical museum, it still takes my breath away.

Built in 1555-1561, legend claims Ivan the Terrible was so smitten by its design that he blinded the architect to ensure a masterpiece its like would not be constructed elsewhere. While Ivan was not above maiming and killing, the subsequent activity of St. Basil’s architect suggests the legend is only that. More recently, Josef Stalin thought the cathedral obstructed the exit from Red Square, and he entertained repeated notions of its destruction to facilitate his military parades through the square. Today, gazing in awestruck admiration at an edifice without equal, we are debtors to the architect who curbed Stalin’s ambition, trading his freedom for airing his opinion, doing time in the gulag for threatening suicide if the folly was consummated.

The kids pose in front of the cathedral and most good-naturedly tolerate photo after photo in the chill. We retreat into the ritzy GUM Mall (pronounced “goom”), home of upper crust western merchandisers like Cartier, Dior, and Estee Lauder. A glass and steel arcade covers the three-story mall, and I photograph the kids on a bridge over a main hallway, harkening back to one of my favorite photos of my own kids here after our adoption three years ago. In Soviet days, the mall was nationalized and never suffered the shortages for which the rest of the country was infamous. Larisa used to wait for hours in lines here that snaked through Red Square for the opportunity to buy whatever GUM had in stock. It was advantageous to know an insider employed here; this inside information might glean a shopper a coveted item otherwise unavailable. Larisa once went to GUM to purchase shoes. When she reached the head of the line, those available were three sizes too small, but she dared not bypass them. Such was life in the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, things in GUM today are less attainable than in communist times; grossly inflated prices ensure most people there are working, browsing, or warming up.

On our way out of Red Square, we see two men dressed as Cossacks outside the State Historical Museum. The kids stop to ogle them, and the men browbeat us to pay for a picture. As we hesitate, Larisa works her magic. The men ask her if the kids are orphans; when she says, yes, we’re here to spend time with them, the Cossacks tell us to take the picture free. I ask Larisa later how they knew the kids are orphans. “They have good eyes, and know orphans when they see them,” she says with sphinx-like mystery.

We enter a bookstore, and Dima shows us a section where he has already read most offerings. The store is distressingly overcrowded, making browsing a bane rather than a pleasure. I recall an insightful book I read about marketing. Researchers observed shoppers in stores to determine how many times they could be jostled while looking at an item before they abandoned it and moved on. They found buyers would tolerate being bumped from behind twice, but not thrice. The researchers called this result the “butt brush effect,” a name and concept burned into my brain. While in this bookstore, I conclude the research was not done in Russia, since the butt brush effect would come into play after three seconds, and the bookstore would go out of business within days. Of all the things that would make life in Russia doleful, I find the overcrowding everywhere to be among the most egregious.

On the way home, we visit my favorite Russian store, Eliseevsky’s Gastronom. Formerly known as Gastronom Number One when nationalized in the Soviet era, the supermarket sells gourmet foodstuffs and houses my favorite pastry counter in the world. The ceiling and walls are carved and gilded, and chandeliers illumine the products. I worry I’ve irritated Larisa with my incessant requests for Eliseevsky’s and their peerless chocolate croissants, but one bite reminds me I can withstand her impatience. Larisa thinks I should buy a croissant in a street underpass and save the Eliseevsky mark-up, but the ambiance of the store is worth every ruble to me.

All week, Alexander Z., eight, known by his nickname Sasha, is challenging. He lags behind, fights holding hands, and struggles with correction. I worry as we walk through the metro, holding his hand at times as he strains to get away, that someone might think I’m a foreign kidnapper. Sasha doesn’t cooperate for photos at St. Basil’s and whines at the smallest provocation. Every few minutes our walk is punctuated by, “Sasha, nyet!” or “Where’s Sasha?” He worries me because his getting lost could shut down our program, and because the way he’s acting, he’s not likely to find a family. I can’t in good conscience put a child like him on another trip when other kids also needing a chance will be more compliant. Sasha needs good parenting, and I hate to think at his age, his behavior on a single trip might doom him to a lifetime as an orphan. I desperately will him to behave, more for his good than ours. When it doesn’t work, I decide dejectedly there are other, more likely candidates for adoption. Knowing there are more kids than families, Sasha's second trip would take a chance from another child. I resist giving up on anyone, but can’t harm other innocent kids who need families as badly as he. It’s a helpless feeling seeing an eight-year-old unwittingly making a major life decision alone and unawares.

There’s nothing feel-good about it, just a good faith judgment call, trying to help as many kids as possible get home forever. But right now, I have no reason to believe Sasha will go anywhere other than back to his orphanage.

***

See accompanying photos and videos here.

I'm Loving It: Photos and Videos

In Russia: Day 7

See accompanying story here.

Gorky Park

Moscow Metro

Dima on the Metro

Down the Escalator at the Moscow Metro

Moscow Metro Crowds

Yuri Gagarin Monument and Cosmonaut Museum

Vladimir Lenin in October Square

Moscow McDonald's

World of Kindness



Lighthouse Kids Ride the Metro

I'm Lovin' It

In Russia: Day 7

Halloween dawns Saturday, but no one dresses up in Russia. Larisa makes blini, thin Russian pancakes like greasy crepes, filled with a cream cheese-type mixture and topped with fruit and sour cream. When I know what she’s whipping up, my response is instinctively Pavlovian. Larisa is a talented cook, and I love her authentic treats.

Leaving the hostel, we stop at Gorky Park. In summer, Gorky is crowded with families enjoying pricey rides, but today it’s abandoned, except for a man selling rides on a reindeer and a balloon saleswoman by the gate. I’m mystified who their clientele is at this time of year, and I wonder if they’ll find a single taker today.

The cold is everything you’d expect from Russia. The wide boulevards bustle with an eclectic mixture of Soviet-style jalopies, compact European cars, and high-end luxury sedans of Russia’s nouveau riche, so larger streets have underpasses where pedestrians cross. The Gorky Park underpass houses an underground art gallery, where we linger a spell. Confession: I’m less interested in the paintings than the warmth, as this one is enclosed and heated. Outside again, we wander through a humble statue park. The kids stand by an oversized globe called “World of Kindness.” It seems especially fitting for our international group, which is melding famously. At the end of the free park is the Soviet Statuary Park. I am fascinated and want badly to visit. It’s frigid, though, and the rest of the group is disinterested so I defer to them. Larisa asks the kids if they know Stalin, Lenin, and Khrushchev. Serious Dima, twelve, and my star of the trip, raises his hand and says he has. Larisa confides, “It doesn’t mean anything to them. He’s heard the names, but he doesn’t know the deeds.” She seems bothered by their historical ignorance, lamenting we only learn from history when we study it, but allowing it’s not the kids’ fault. Leaving, I plan I’ll return in January, when it’s even colder.

Europe’s largest city, Moscow is a sprawling metropolis, so we hop the metro to get around. Constructed under Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, it’s a transportation wonder. Deep beneath the surface, the subterranean stations were intended to serve as bomb shelters during World War II. Unfathomably long escalators transfer passengers to the bowels of Moscow, where they catch their trains and reach their destinations expeditiously. Moscow’s metro is the busiest in the world, so efficient it’s rare to wait more than a minute for a train. A bargain at about 60 cents per ride, the metro is much quicker than navigating the Moscow traffic above ground. A destination in its own right, some stations are works of art, with mosaics depicting scenes from the life of Vladimir Lenin, statues extolling the wholesome virtues of the Soviet worker’s life, bas reliefs of cultural pursuits, chandeliers, and marble. My only reservation about the metro is the crowd. Our adult-to-child ratio favors the kids, and it would be easy to lose a child in the throng. Each time we exit a car, we do a frantic head count to ensure all are accounted for, and we breathe easier when we’re all together again. Larisa cajoles the attendants at almost every entrance to let the small children on free, and they find her powers of persuasion irresistible.

We go to the cosmonaut museum, situated at the base of a giant rocket-topped monument for Yuri Gagarin, Russia’s first cosmonaut. Back in the 1950s, Gagarin was the first man in space, still a matter of considerable national pride. Larisa asks the kids to name the first cosmonaut and Dima raises his hand, giving the correct answer. The cosmonaut museum surprises me; I would not have guessed such a state-of-the-art museum existed anywhere in Russia. At less than $1 for children and about $3 for adults, the price is right for potential adoptive families. The quality of exhibits is uniformly high, and the kids are mesmerized by the space vehicles and the interactive computer displays. Yulya, twelve, and little Larisa, ten, listen with rapt attention as a guide describes a single exhibit to them personally for over 30 minutes. We see two stuffed dogs, Belka and Strelka, who went into space as canine cosmonauts. I appreciate the exhibit information in Cyrillic, since I feel no guilt for not reading all of it. The cosmonaut museum is a hit, and a sure destination for our January trip.

On our way to the Durov Animal Theater, we pass October Square, an electrical wire and exhaust-filled nod to the communists who long for the good old days of the Soviet Union. A large statue of Lenin, the only one still standing in Moscow, supervises a mess of traffic like Big Brother. Before the show, we try a different McDonald’s for dinner. Packed with Russians hungry for a taste of America, it epitomizes chaos. It takes brass to eat at McDonald’s in Moscow, at least if you plan to sit whilst you eat. Larisa asks diners who look done if they are leaving. Not enough are, so she starts pleading if some of our kids can sit at their tables with them. I am appalled she asks, and shocked when all say yes. By the time we have our food, Larisa has somehow finagled seating for 19 together. Sometimes I rue Larisa’s brass; other times I am awestruck. My emotion now is primarily awe; otherwise, we’d all be standing with our Big Macs. For ease, I order ten Happy Meals for the kids, and the cashier is taken aback when told the quantity. She hears I hardly speak Russian, and she thinks I have misspoken. The number and industry of McDonald’s cashiers in Russia is staggering, so I snap two pictures for the blog while waiting. This act of international restaurant espionage elicits a passionate tsk-tsk from a guard I hadn’t seen. Russian businesses seem sensitive about photos; if you wonder if picture taking is permitted, take one and gauge permissibility by the response. When the meals come, I am most unhappy to learn a Russian Happy Meal is boxless and toyless. The kids don’t mind, and attack their fries and Coca-Cola with vim; I doubt they know they’ve been gypped. Eating shoulder to shoulder and bumping elbows with the twelve around our table for six, we marvel how McDonald’s tastes better in a foreign land.

Leaving the restaurant, night has fallen. We hightail it to the Durov Animal Theater, worried we’ll be late. I haven’t been to a single museum or performance venue in Russia where attendees keep their coats. Cloakrooms are ubiquitous in Moscow, staffed by blue-smocked attendants who seldom outpace glacial speed. I study them for signs of job satisfaction derived from repetitiously collecting strangers’ coats and hanging them on hooks all day, but find none. We sit right before the lights dim, in time to see a pig pull a wagon, a porcupine jump fences, a hippopotamus waddle in circles, pelicans fly from the rafters, and crows play basketball. The show is mildly amusing, but not enough for me to fight my need of sleep. In the darkened theater, I nod off, only to awaken with a start when a loud noise indicates the end of an intermission I hadn’t known started.

At the end of a full day, we return to the hostel to regroup for tomorrow with our hearts full, our hands cold, and our cheeks rosy. Sunday we’ll find Russia’s most famous sight in our scopes, and I can’t wait to share it with the kids and families. In the hustle of our sightseeing, I wonder if anyone is falling in love.

I'm loving the trip, but can hardly wait to see the results.

***

See accompanying photos and videos here.

Golden Arches, Golden Domes

In Russia: Day 6

Bleary-eyed and dragging, my host families from Michigan, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Illinois file into the hostel at about 1:00 p.m. on Friday. Even after the flight and the 7-8 hour time change, they’re anxious to meet the kids, who've been waiting almost six hours. The meeting lacks the customary fanfare of a US trip because all of us, kids and families, have traveled overnight, but it’s just as well we skip the drama since half the kids lack official hosts. Shortly afterward, we tackle the day’s sightseeing. Without the introduction of who goes with whom, it’s interesting to see how families and kids pair up on our walk, and how kids flit from family to family, in an apparent attempt to cover their bases. It’s a foreign dynamic compared to previous trips. Since I don't have other potential adoptive families to draw from this time, I worry at first when the “wrong” child is with the “wrong” parent, but eventually decide it doesn’t matter if everyone notices all the kids. An added benefit: it is less obvious which kids don’t have families this way. While I’m far from happy about the host to orphan ratio, watching how everyone is soon comfortable with everyone else, I realize this idea was a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Scarcely out of our hostel, we turn left on the busiest street in Moscow, just in time to see the street closed off and a motorcade of black Mercedes limousines sandwiched by a phalanx of motorcycles speeding down the road. Larisa says it’s the president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, and commands us to wave. We do, but his tinted windows keep us from knowing if he reciprocates. He’s returning home to the Kremlin, just down the road from where we’re staying. Larisa claims the kids are celebrities now that they’ve seen a car holding such an important person, but they don’t believe her.

We’re hungry. Plans to visit Moscow’s only authentic pizza restaurant fizzle, but we spot a restaurant marked with golden arches on our way. The kids vote to eat there, but when we enter, the place is so busy there’s nowhere to sit. We end up at MuMu instead, an atmospheric joint specializing in Russian food like pelmini and borscht. It’s delicious, but the kids would prefer something a little more American.

We wander Arbat Street, Moscow’s pedestrian promenade, lined with little shops selling matryoshka dolls, trinkets, and Russian kitsch. We pass a shriveled old woman wearing a sandwich board incongruously advertising tattoos. In our sleep-deprived delirium, nobody buys anything, and nobody gets a tattoo.

At the end of the road, we see the golden domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The largest church building in Russian Orthodoxy, the original cathedral on the site was built to commemorate Napoleon’s departure from Russia, and consecrated in 1883. In 1931, Stalin issued an edict, leading to the church's destruction. Plans called for an audaciously monstrous “Palace of the Soviets” to be built there. Blueprints crowned the structure with a garish statue of Lenin over 300 feet tall, but instability in the ground due to the nearby Moscow River rendered the plan untenable, and the project was abandoned. In its place, the world’s largest open-air swimming pool was built. Larisa and Dima fondly reminisced swimming there, playing hide and seek in the steam of the pool on savagely frigid days. They had mixed emotions when, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the pool was demolished and the church faithfully reconstructed according to original specifications.

Darkness falls early in Russia, and after the cathedral, we call it a day, boarding a bus back to the hostel. Larisa tells the driver the children are orphans, so he lets them ride without a ticket. As we thaw at home, parents work together in the kitchen, creating a scene of domestic bliss while the kids play behind us. Ramen noodles and pickles are dinner. It isn’t fancy fare, but it beats beets and white meatloaf. As I retreat to my room to write, the same sensation I always have when kids arrive floods my psyche. I know I’ve done all I can for this moment, it’s here, and it’s time to see what God has in store for the kids and their futures. I’m praying that it’s something special.

My head hits the pillow at 3 a.m. I sleep quickly, but not before mulling a smidgen about how privileged I am to play a role, and how honored to be entrusted with a first stab at this unfolding, grand adventure.

See video here.

Driven

In Russia: Day 5

On Tuesday, having received permission to visit the orphanages in our region, we set out with Yelena’s husband. He leaves us at the second orphanage. After the visit, several Lighthouse alumni awaiting their families walk us down a wooded driveway to a nearly abandoned road, where Larisa begins thumbing it. The first car down the road is a severe, two-door communist holdover; its driver stops for us. With three more bodies, we aren’t in a minute before the windows fog. I’ve never ridden in a Russian car with a sufficient defogger, so a towel is standard equipment. When we mention the fogged-over windows, our driver makes a futile attempt to reassure when he claims that in winter, he drives with only a small square of ice chipped off the windshield. The implication is if he can drive with that handicap, this one is child’s play, but the message I actually receive is that his judgment is irreparably seared. On a serpentine road slicked with driving rain, our driver takes an unseemly interest in his cell phone. The death wish Russian drivers exhibit in lane changes paralyzes me: charging up on the next car’s bumper and tailgating until oncoming traffic passes, they swerve out immediately into the opposing lane, pass, then veer back into the right lane. When you’re lucky, you’re not rounding a bend or on a hill, or both, as the stunt occurs. Time not spent praying is spent marveling there are not more crosses roadside. Larisa sees I’m board-like, with bulging eyes. “Don’t look,” she counsels. Sitting in back, on a trip of unknown duration with a stranger driving who speaks no English, I’m struck by the parallel between my current predicament and the experience of the Lighthouse kids going home with their host families from distant airports after arrival. I conjure up new empathy for them, incredulous that their circumstances in Russia are so austere that such a risk becomes a good one.

Two days later, we’re at our second-to-last orphanage. We pick up Alexander, Elena, and Larisa for the trip to Moscow. They’re abuzz as they get in the car with their small cache of belongings; they’ve never before been on a train or to Moscow, they tell us. The car we’re in is a Volga; we rode in this same car, with this same driver, when we picked up our own kids from the orphanage three years ago. The recollection is sufficient to jar me as snowflakes begin their descent. With seven people now in the car, Elaine rides in front with a seatbelt and more space, though the tradeoff is a better view of the driving. Larisa, the three kids, and I are crammed in the back. It’s boring at first, but the kids snap to attention as I write their names almost correctly in Cyrillic in the omnipresent fog on my window. Elena sits on my lap, and our window tic-tac-toe is a cat’s game. Midway through our trek, we pass a horrendous crash, ironically the first we’ve seen; there’s no way the driver could have survived. I doubt our driver takes the crash to heart, because within a mile he’s fumbling with his MP3 player in a protracted ordeal that makes me grab the front seat with one hand, and dig my nails into the door’s armrest with my other. I finally heed Larisa's advice and close my eyes.

We stop at another orphanage, interviewing fourteen-year-old Nadia, who wears a “Jesus” necklace. She dreams of adoption and becoming a veterinarian, but her biological mother is imprisoned and must first relinquish her parental rights. Nadia wrote her yesterday, confessed she yearns for a chance at life, and begged to be released to go to America. She prays her mother will sign the document, but if she won’t, this demure girl is truly hopeless. Someone in our car is completely smitten with her, but without relinquishment papers, it hardly matters.

We pick up Dmitry, Alexander Z., Nicholas S., and Yulya at this orphanage. A van brings us all to the train station, along with chaperone Svetlana, a caretaker at this orphanage. These four kids look so expectant as they board the van I suspect they don’t know there’s no host for any of them in Moscow.

At the train station, we de-van in a drizzle and meet the rest of our group: Nikolai V. and Anton, both from two previous trips, and Denis, in America last March. Denis is being adopted, but his family is here to meet another child, too. They want to see him, and Lisa has been kind enough to let him join our group. Our band complete, we wait inside the station. I have been coveting a photo of the perfect babushka for my blog. I finally find her inside the station. She is heavyset, wears an ancient coat, wraps a scarf around her head, and clutches a plastic bag with one hand and a branch for a walking stick in the other. As I discuss with Elaine how to discretely snap a photo, my new camera falls hard on the terrazzo floor. I pick it up, but it’s clearly broken. Elaine lends me her camera; the memory card is full. While we fumble, the prototypical babushka slips into the darkness outside the station when her train arrives. I berate myself for missing the shot, but derive slight consolation in skirting the photographic propriety quagmire.

We cross the tracks to our platform as the light of the train approaches us too quickly for comfort. Travelling with ten kids is daunting, and is exacerbated when another train charges by on the neighboring track without stopping. It forms a deafening wind tunnel, and we race through the rain to board our car on time. Once situated, I talk Elaine’s ear off, trying to make sense of what we saw in the orphanages this trip. I have a mountain of compelling blog material, and I settle in to work when Elaine is too tired to listen further. Finding my computer’s battery is dead, I reluctantly succumb to my need for rest, and, for the first night since I left home, get more than three hours of sleep.

Morning dawns and I awaken to our train lurching into the Moscow station. We reunite with the kids and Svetlana, who rode in three, four-bed compartments several cars behind us, and join the tapestry of passengers from trains arriving from far-flung reaches of Russia. Taxi drivers solicit us, but Dima, Larisa’s brother, awaits us with his van. Fifteen of us scrunch in with our luggage; Dima wants to hire another cab, but Larisa, the senior sibling and unfailingly frugal, overrules him and says we’ll all fit.

Combating rush hour traffic on the drive to the hostel we’ll stay at, Dima leaves us sitting in the common area since our rooms aren’t ready yet. The kids wile the time watching shockingly trashy music videos. Svetlana seems not to notice, and I derive from this omission further motivation to get the kids out of their orphanages. Meanwhile, Dima hurries Elaine to the airport for her return flight home, and I am distraught to see her go. When Dima returns, he’ll have my host families in tow; I’m anxious to meet them. They’ve been warned this is an inaugural trip. All have agreed to be flexible, and I believe them, since they’ve already been very gracious. After forty-four trips to the United States for the Lighthouse Project, that trip is quite streamlined. But this version will be a learning experience, and statistics I take for granted at home are out the window now. Everything is new.

Everything, that is, except my prayer that in all my trips, each of the kids entrusted to me find their families.

Officials

In Russia: Day 4

On our way to the first orphanage, we rode in the private car driven by Yelena’s husband. It is rare for Russian vehicles to have seatbelts in the back, a discomfiting fact made more disturbing by the way Russians drive. Paradoxically, our seat had a shoulder belt, but no buckle to put the clip into.

Piling into the car, translator Larisa told us to hold the seatbelts across ourselves. We complied, not knowing why it mattered. We hadn’t gone far when a policeman standing in the road waved a black and white striped club to motion us over. While our driver went to defend himself against the accusations outside the car, Larisa postulated the policeman thought we weren’t wearing seatbelts and saw our provincial driver as an easy target for money. Larisa is uniquely suited for her Lighthouse Project job, and combines a shoot-from-the-hip spontaneity, almost brassiness, that defuses tense situations. Testing her hypothesis, she leaped from the car, asking the policeman why he’d targeted us. Told I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, Larisa questioned me if it had been over my shoulder. Righteously armed with my affirmative, Larisa marched back to the hapless officer and warned him there were American “officials” in the car, they were wearing their seatbelts, and if he proceeded to cite us anyway, he was risking an international incident. Rather than writing a bigger ticket for that concoction, he let us go. Debriefing Larisa, we roared with laughter. Us, officials?

It’s ever a mystery what Larisa will do next, but we love her joie de vivre and uncanny knack for helping everything to work out right.