Where is it? Sakhalin Oblast, or region, is an island located in the Russian Far East, to the east of Primorye Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here. China, Japan and Russia have all claimed sovereignty... more

I don’t know why it is that the key conversations in our family seem to occur in traffic. It's not like we spend a lot of time on the road; I probably have fewer miles on my three-year-old car right now than most families have after 12 months.

But you might remember that my older son, who was adopted from Vladivostok, started asking questions about his birth mother... more

When I went to Vladivostok in November 1999 for my first adoption, you could fly from Seattle to the Russian Far East on Aeroflot. It wasn't a non-stop; I've done fewer stops on most of the puddle-jumpers I've flown. After leaving Seattle, the flight landed in Anchorage, then Magadan, Khabarovsk and finally Vladivostok.... more

Maybe, just maybe, this week brought us one step closer to a better relationship between the United States and Russia.

Yesterday, after weeks of heated exchanges between Washington and Moscow over America's plans for installing a missile defense system in eastern Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with a surprise. Rather than base the system in the former Warsaw pact countries of Poland and the Czech Republic, Putin told Washington, put it in Azerbaijan. And, according to the... more

Where is it? Magadan Oblast, or region, is located in the Russian Far East north of Primorye Krai and Khabarovsk Krai along the Sea of Okhotsk. Prior to Stalin's death the region was known as Kolyma. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here.

What's the biggest city? Magadan, population 99,399 as of the 2002 census, out of 182,726 total inhabitants in the region.

Who lives... more

You all know how long your agency has been waiting to be accredited by Moscow, and how much paperwork it has filed. But do you know where it stands with its Hague accreditation?

Say what?

The Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption is a piece of international law dating from 1993. It governs the rights of children, birth parents and adoptive parents in international adoption situations. The goal is to have a clear, universally accepted set... more

I got a rude awakening the other week: My Russian is in terrible shape.

Full disclosure: It was never in great shape to begin with. It's the last of the five foreign languages I have learned, and when I learned it, I focused on a very narrow vocabulary. Basically just what I needed to communicate with a small child and the people who cared for him.

But my minister wanted to try something new for Pentecost, so she asked several members of the congregation to read the same passage, each in a different language. I got... more

Where is it? Khabarovsk Krai, or region, is located in the Russian Far East just north of Primorye Krai along the Sea of Okhotsk. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here.

What's the biggest city? Khabarovsk, which is a major Pacific Ocean port and the second biggest city in the Russian Far East after Vladivostok. Like Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, population 579,000, grew up along the... more

Many of the longstanding blogs about adopting from Russia have been, understandably, very quiet in the last few months. But even as we all wait for word from Moscow on the re-accreditation (Andrei Aleksandrovich, if you are reading, please give everyone in the Ministry of Education the "hurry up" sign), a handful of parents are beginning their adoption journeys. I'd like to introduce you to some of them today.

First up are Troy and Rachel at "Journey With The Williams Family". I found them... more

It's Monday night, which means it is finally time for me to read the Sunday paper. And what do I find in the Sunday magazine that accompanies The New York Times but an article on the very issue I addressed Saturday night: Holding a child back before kindergarten.

I had, ironically, opened up the magazine to read a piece called "Boys Gone Mild", about grownups now having to teach children how... more