I have traveled to Russia three times for adoptions: A three-week trip in 1999, a one-week first trip in May 2005 and a 10-day second trip in September 2005. I can distill the essential elements of first visit travel into these five points:

1) Be ready to fly on short notice. You have been waiting, sometimes not so patiently, for weeks and months to travel. Your agency has told you, more than once, not yet. Then suddenly on a Friday afternoon you get the call--be on a plane next Thursday. You hand your boss your carefully drafted document on how your staff will be managed in your absence, and you go.

2) Don't pack everyone for one person in one suitcase. Airline baggage handlers--U.S. or Russian--don't know that this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Back in the days of one trip for all, I shared a hotel floor with a couple who had lost the suitcase with all of their baby's clothes. The other parents rallied to create a wardrobe for Baby Igor, but it was tension those parents didn't need.

3) Sleep whenever and wherever you can. You have probably never been through time changes as extreme as those you will experience when traveling to Russia. Both of my adoptions took place in the Russian Far East--nine hours' more flying from Moscow. I closed my eyes whenever my body was tired, which was often, and I relied on my agency reps to get me where I needed to be on time.

4) Take a deep breath before you get in the car with your driver. You may find yourselves in a left-hand drive car on a pothole-ridden right-hand drive road, whizzing down mountain passes with nary a guardrail in site. In-city driving is not much more serene.

5) If you are traveling with another person, take turns being the photographer and note-taker. There is so much to see and do, and so much jet lag, it is hard for one person to take it all in.

Yes, I know, I haven't even gotten to getting through your first orphanage visit, and leaving your child behind on trip one with out losing your mind. That's too much for one post.