Russia Heritage Trip

Believe it or not it is snowing outside here in Fort Worth. We are very excited about our trip to Russia next June. If anyone is interested in traveling on the trip with us please contact Arienne Harvey at Gladney as applications are being accepted and due January 15, 2010. Happy Holidays!

Hi Everyone: We are busy working on itineraries and pricing for the trip. We hope all is well with everyone. Have a great Thanksgiving holiday.

That is so awesome. We are so excited about this trip!

Gladney is hosting a conference call on Tuesday, September 22. If you are interested in joining the call please e-mail Arienne Harvey at Arienne.Harvey@Gladney.org requesting to attend the call and provide her the following information: Your Name Your address Your phone # Your E-mail address Your Region of adoption The Year of your adoption She will then provide you with the conference call details and instructions. We are in the planning stages of the trip and would really like your input in order to make this a wonderful once in a lifetime experience for your family. It is our hope that through discussions with you we can build a thoughtful, exciting and child centered itinerary. We are very excited about this trip and hope you can join us for the call. Warm Regards, Your Gladney Russia Heritage/Service Trip Team

We are scheduling a conference call on Tuesday, Sept, 22, at noon CST, for families to call in and learn about the trip, if they would like too. We would like to have questions ahead of time... We know the biggest question is cost and we aren't able to give a firm number as some of that depends on how many families go; whether we stay in a air-conditioned hotel or rent air-conditioned apts, rent a bus for 10 people or for 30... Also, we have a private e-mail list of potentially interested families and we would like everyone to be on that list so you can get up-to-date information and the conference call call-in number. (Will you e-mail Arienne Harvey at HQ so she/we have your e-mail address.) We anticipate the call will be about an hour. It is totally optional...

Hi, we do plan to spend two full days in each region. Our time in the regions is limited to during the week when the baby house director and officials we want to meet with are working. Hopefully we will do some kind of service project at each baby house and some sightseeing in the region. The sightseeing time in Moscow serves a couple purposes: one, it lets the kids get to know one another while seeing their native land and two, they get to see some historic places which they may or may not ever see in person again. Of course, some will not remember that they saw many of them when they were infants! If you look at the schedule we posted back in June, we fly into Moscow spend 4 days there, travel to the regions and depending on whether you are visiting one or two regions, you could leave Wednesday, the 23rd, or Saturday, the 26th -- just a little over a week! The St. Petersburg visit is optional... Let us know what other questions you have... Although it doesn't look like it we are working hard trying to nail down some key decisions. We plan to schedule a conference call with all interested families-- hopefully -- within the next month

I am very interested in this trip. I'm sure I will not be able to do the whole two weeks. I am more interested in going to the kids' region than sightseeing. Can't wait to see how it all shakes out.

Andreis, we are still working on costs -- a ballpark round number high guestimate for Moscow and 1 region is $1000 per person for Moscow -- before you have a stroke, that is based on only 2 people to a hotel room in Moscow and it includes transportation from airport and back, plus tour buses based on 10 people traveling.... We anticipate 20-30 people going which will help reduce those costs and we are looking at apts for Moscow which can also bring the cost down without sacrificing comfort... The trip to the region is considerably less -- two mostly full days in Rayzan -- traveling there I believe by car/van. The whole trip is supposed to be less than 2 weeks including St. P. Sorry I took so long to respond. We hope to have more accurate numbers soon... we've been waiting for Karen to get back from Russia where she was gathering info first hand for us!

We're interested in going. Will depend upon cost and length of the trip. I like the idea of being able to leave early. Not that we don't want to see St. Petersburg. I'm uncertain if I will be able to take more than two weeks of vacation. There would be four of us. We would be using miles. How many days would we spend in our region? Ryazan is our region.