Today I received news that we will more than likely be leaving Medellin next Friday. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about moving on from Medellin to Bogota and home. I am so happy our process is moving quickly here in Colombia and I am ready to be home with our whole family but as always with adoption, there are amazing gains and big losses. On Friday, Jhonatan will leave behind his city, his language, his culture and life as he has known it for the past 11 years and I am sad for him. He is a Colombiano through and through. He loves his country, he is proud of his city and its food, music and unique beauty. He cheers passionately for his local soccer team and knows all the words to the Latin music playing on the radio. He is also a loyal friend and I know he will miss his "amigito" very much. Jhonatan is gaining a forever family but losing the people he has called mama, papa, hermanito y hermita for the past four years. We have been gathering a few mementos for him to take home part of Colombia with him and I hope we can keep his culture and language alive for Jhonatan as he transitions into our family.
So, that brings me to updating the blog. Our family has truly loved Medellin and all we have experienced here and I want to make sure I get it written down for others traveling here and for Jhonatan. This comes with a warning that this could be a very long post but I'll try to just hit the highlights!
OUR GUIDE
Okay, I knew we would have a guide/interpreter provided by our adoption agency. I thought she would just take us to meetings with ICBF, make sure our paperwork was in order, etc. I had no idea we would be completely taken care of by the lovely and wonderful Vicky! She has been phenomenal. Vicky takes care of anything and everything, with a smile on her face. She is professional but so fun and I'm going to miss her when I leave Medellin. She has a heart for adoptions and really loves her job and it shows!
THE TRAUTMAN FAMILY
I started trading emails with Tiffany after we discovered each other's blogs. Both of our families live in Maryland and were adopting children from Medellin. It was earlier in the process but it looked we were in about the same step. As time went on, we weren't sure if we would end up in Medellin at the same time. Their process would move a little faster and then we would but it ended up that we were given the date to receive Jhonatan exactly a week after they were to receive their 3 children. After we arrived in Medellin and were here for a few days, we ended up switching apartments. Unbelievably, we moved into the same apartment complex as the Trautman Family and how wonderful it has been to have them here! Greg (when he was still here) and I have really enjoyed sharing stories with Tiffany and Brent and our kids loved playing with their kids as the pool and on the soccer field. They leave for Bogota tomorrow morning to finish their journey home to Maryland. You can read about it here and she has been much better about updating her blog than I have.
ENTREGA
On Friday, May 13th Vicky picked us up at 7:50 to drive to the ICBF office for our Entrega meeting. Our meeting was at 8:30am and started right on time. Greg and I sat at a round table with Vicky (our guide), Maria Jose (our attorney), Jhonatan's psychologist, and 2 other ICBF workers, one being the director of adoptions for Medellin. They talked a little about the process and Jhonatan's history. They asked us some questions about our family, our motivations to adopt and our relationship with Jhonatan. I should mention that we were already nervous, the room was unbearably hot and Greg was sick! After we had signed some papers taking custody of Jhonatan while we are in Medellin, they announced that we were just waiting for him to arrive. The girls had been quietly sitting and coloring in a corner of the room (thank goodness!) and they noticed some activity outside the door. The older girls jumped up to try to get a look, Cassie turned to say she saw him and then in he walked! There were hugs all around and then Jhonatan had to sit down for a minute because his stomach hurt. Poor boy...I think it was all nerves. A few minutes went by and out we walked with our boy! We went straight back to the apartment and got Jhonatan unpacked and settled in. Then, Ana picked us up and took us to the country club for lunch and for the kids to swim in the pool. What a perfect afternoon! Everyone got along great and the only issues we had were the girls arguing over who would sit next to Jhonatan!
That's it for tonight.....more tomorrow! :)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
An Update in Pictures....Stories to Follow
Sorry so long with no update. We have been keeping busy and I have simply been too tired to post at night. So, this post is mostly pictures and I will share the stories later....
Well, I can't get the pictures uploaded (ugh!). I'll try again tomorrow. For those of you who are friends on Facebook, I uploaded them there.
Everyone else...we have our sweet boy and he is doing great! :) We are loving Medellin and are enjoying our new family of 7!
Hopefully, I can get some pictures up tomorrow night and share some stories as well!
Chao!
Well, I can't get the pictures uploaded (ugh!). I'll try again tomorrow. For those of you who are friends on Facebook, I uploaded them there.
Everyone else...we have our sweet boy and he is doing great! :) We are loving Medellin and are enjoying our new family of 7!
Hopefully, I can get some pictures up tomorrow night and share some stories as well!
Chao!
Monday, May 9, 2011
We made it!
We are here in Medellin! What a strange feeling to be in the same city with Jhonatan. The girls were worried we might run into him (so cute) but Medellin is a huge city and his barrio is on the opposite side of Medellin from where we are staying.
The trip down was a breeze. The girls were amazing and we had a very smooth trip. One of our favorite parts was the view of the mountains outside of the city as we flew into the airport. Like one of the girls said, it didn't look real because it was so green and beautiful!
Our apartment is in a great location. We can walk to anything! Sunday afternoon we walked to Sante Fe mall and there happened to be a festival going on. There were tons of people, Latin music playing and people handing out free mini cupcakes (which, of course, the girls loved!). We definitely get a lot of looks here. You don't see many Americans and the girls really stand out with their blonde hair. We ate dinner at a restaurant that serves "arepas con todos". The food was tasty and the view of the city was gorgeous! On the way out of the mall, we grabbed ice cream from Mimo's and walked over to the grocery store which is almost directly across from our apartment. It was fun to walk around the store and look at the different fruits and the girls (and Greg) got a big kick out of seeing the milk. It comes in bags here! We grabbed some fruit and a few things for breakfast and I bought a Colombian cellphone that you can pay to add minutes as you need them.
The climate here is wonderful. We have had the windows open the whole time and are really enjoying the city views and noises.
Today started with a walk over to Oviedo Mall and coffee and pastries at Juan Valdez (yum!). We shopped around a little and then came back to the apartment so the girls could swim. For lunch, Greg walked the girls a few blocks over and they ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (nothing like traveling all the way to Colombia to eat in a restaurant that is in DC). I stayed back to write some emails and make phone calls. We made contact with our guide/interpreter today, Vicky and she was lovely. She already scheduled a meeting for us with her and our lawyer on Wednesday at 6:00pm. She also let me know that we are expected at the ICBF office at 8:30am on Friday to receive Jhonatan! We also got in touch with Ana, our brother-in-law's sister who lives here in Medellin. We are sooo fortunate to have her here! I asked her for a suggestion for a quick outing this afternoon and she had the perfect thing. We took a cab to El Castillo. It is a real castle right here in Medellin. It is very close by but uphill all the way there so we took a cab (all 6 of us shoved into a teeny tiny taxi). The castle grounds were beautiful and the view from there is breathtaking! We took a guided tour through the castle but it was in Spanish so I caught a few things here and there but Greg and the girls had no idea what was said. I think it was a great experience for them to get a little glimpse of what it is like for Jhonatan when everyone is speaking English. They still enjoyed the tour, Eva most of all. Every time we walked into a room, she said, "Wow!". I'm pretty sure she would be a princess and live in a castle if she could! We did meet another American at the castle, a girl in her early twenties that is living here for a month to work on her Spanish. As it turns out, her parents have adopted 3 children from Colombia.
We walked back instead of taking a cab. We are really enjoying being able to get out and walk around. We feel completely safe and the people of Medellin are so helpful!
We talked to Jhonatan tonight and ended up telling him that we are already in Medellin. He was so excited even though we can't seem him until Friday. I think for all us (including Jhonatan) our being in Medellin makes it all feel so real!
Tomorrow, our guide is meeting us at 10am and taking us to Parque Explora (a science museum with many really cool outdoor exhibits) and in the afternoon Ana is taking us to get the girls' hair braided.
I'll try to upload pictures tomorrow.
Chao!
The trip down was a breeze. The girls were amazing and we had a very smooth trip. One of our favorite parts was the view of the mountains outside of the city as we flew into the airport. Like one of the girls said, it didn't look real because it was so green and beautiful!
Our apartment is in a great location. We can walk to anything! Sunday afternoon we walked to Sante Fe mall and there happened to be a festival going on. There were tons of people, Latin music playing and people handing out free mini cupcakes (which, of course, the girls loved!). We definitely get a lot of looks here. You don't see many Americans and the girls really stand out with their blonde hair. We ate dinner at a restaurant that serves "arepas con todos". The food was tasty and the view of the city was gorgeous! On the way out of the mall, we grabbed ice cream from Mimo's and walked over to the grocery store which is almost directly across from our apartment. It was fun to walk around the store and look at the different fruits and the girls (and Greg) got a big kick out of seeing the milk. It comes in bags here! We grabbed some fruit and a few things for breakfast and I bought a Colombian cellphone that you can pay to add minutes as you need them.
The climate here is wonderful. We have had the windows open the whole time and are really enjoying the city views and noises.
Today started with a walk over to Oviedo Mall and coffee and pastries at Juan Valdez (yum!). We shopped around a little and then came back to the apartment so the girls could swim. For lunch, Greg walked the girls a few blocks over and they ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (nothing like traveling all the way to Colombia to eat in a restaurant that is in DC). I stayed back to write some emails and make phone calls. We made contact with our guide/interpreter today, Vicky and she was lovely. She already scheduled a meeting for us with her and our lawyer on Wednesday at 6:00pm. She also let me know that we are expected at the ICBF office at 8:30am on Friday to receive Jhonatan! We also got in touch with Ana, our brother-in-law's sister who lives here in Medellin. We are sooo fortunate to have her here! I asked her for a suggestion for a quick outing this afternoon and she had the perfect thing. We took a cab to El Castillo. It is a real castle right here in Medellin. It is very close by but uphill all the way there so we took a cab (all 6 of us shoved into a teeny tiny taxi). The castle grounds were beautiful and the view from there is breathtaking! We took a guided tour through the castle but it was in Spanish so I caught a few things here and there but Greg and the girls had no idea what was said. I think it was a great experience for them to get a little glimpse of what it is like for Jhonatan when everyone is speaking English. They still enjoyed the tour, Eva most of all. Every time we walked into a room, she said, "Wow!". I'm pretty sure she would be a princess and live in a castle if she could! We did meet another American at the castle, a girl in her early twenties that is living here for a month to work on her Spanish. As it turns out, her parents have adopted 3 children from Colombia.
We walked back instead of taking a cab. We are really enjoying being able to get out and walk around. We feel completely safe and the people of Medellin are so helpful!
We talked to Jhonatan tonight and ended up telling him that we are already in Medellin. He was so excited even though we can't seem him until Friday. I think for all us (including Jhonatan) our being in Medellin makes it all feel so real!
Tomorrow, our guide is meeting us at 10am and taking us to Parque Explora (a science museum with many really cool outdoor exhibits) and in the afternoon Ana is taking us to get the girls' hair braided.
I'll try to upload pictures tomorrow.
Chao!
Friday, May 6, 2011
Busy Week!
TICKETS
So...after we heard about our date to receive Jhonatan, we got on the phone and computer to get our airline tickets. A few hours later, we had worked out the logistics of how we were getting everyone back from Colombia on the dates we needed and purchased all of our tickets for the trip.
VISAS
We needed our Visas by today (Friday) and they take 3 business days to process so the next morning we planned on heading to the Colombian Consulate in DC to drop off our Visa applications and supporting documents. The problem came with the pictures we needed. The Colombian Visa application requires 3cmx3cm passport-style photos. We decided to have them taken at the local Walgreens while we were in North Carolina. That way they would be ready when we needed them (thinking ahead!). Well, the size was wrong and they couldn't figure out how to make them the right size. I decided I would just scan them in at home and adjust the size myself. I should have predicted that I would wait until the night before we went to the consulate to actually do that (which I did) and we were out of color ink in the printer. It being 2am at that point, we decided we would just stop at CVS on the way to DC and get the pictures. Long story short...2 CVS's later, a lot of waiting and explaining we finally had the photos we needed a little after 11am. The only problem was we were in Gaithersburg and the Colombian consulate in DC closes at 12 noon. We drove straight there, pulled up 10 minutes before noon and happened to find a parking place right out front, walked in and up to the 10th floor, handed over our applications, were interviewed and walked out at 12:02 (phew!).
KIDSAVE'S MAIN DISH EVENT
That same day, Kidsave had a great fundraising event in DC. So, back down the road we went. It was a very cool event and it was amazing to be able to share our good news with many of the people who got to know Jhonatan over the summer. We also got to hang out with fellow host families who are also going through the adoption process right now.
Here we are with our friends, Craig and Beth at the event. Hopefully, our next picture together will be of a reunion with our little colombianos!
PACKING AND TO-DO LIST
I spent Wednesday and Thursday working through our to-do list, while still keeping up with the normal activities of the house! Sometimes I felt like the list was getting longer rather than shorter but I think we have crossed off almost everything on the list!
VISAS (AGAIN)
This morning was back to DC to pick up the Visas. My navigation system in the car was telling me to take Connecticut Ave. but I wanted to take the GW Parkway. I headed that way and the navigation was telling me to get off on River Road but I wasn't paying attention (I was thinking of the aforementioned list, especially the apartment that we still didn't have). I'm so glad I ended up taking that route, it led me down Wisconsin Ave. past all of the embassies....it was a beautiful drive! Picked up the visas and was back on my way to Frederick.
APARTMENT HUNTING
We decided to rent an apartment due to the size of our family and wanting to be able to cook, walk around and have our own space. I had been searching and searching on-line with no luck. The apartments we needed in the part of Medellin where we wanted to be were rented or the companies that had some available were slightly (or more) sketchy. I happened to mention that we were still looking for an apartment to Terry Baugh (Kidave president) and she put me in touch with the lovely Monica in New York who volunteers with Kidsave and happens to be from Medellin and a realtor. She not only found a great apartment for us right where we want to be but her mom is meeting us to give us the key.
We have our tickets, our visas, an apartment and our on our way to being packed. All we need now is our boy!
Stay tuned....next post is from Medellin, Colombia!!
So...after we heard about our date to receive Jhonatan, we got on the phone and computer to get our airline tickets. A few hours later, we had worked out the logistics of how we were getting everyone back from Colombia on the dates we needed and purchased all of our tickets for the trip.
VISAS
We needed our Visas by today (Friday) and they take 3 business days to process so the next morning we planned on heading to the Colombian Consulate in DC to drop off our Visa applications and supporting documents. The problem came with the pictures we needed. The Colombian Visa application requires 3cmx3cm passport-style photos. We decided to have them taken at the local Walgreens while we were in North Carolina. That way they would be ready when we needed them (thinking ahead!). Well, the size was wrong and they couldn't figure out how to make them the right size. I decided I would just scan them in at home and adjust the size myself. I should have predicted that I would wait until the night before we went to the consulate to actually do that (which I did) and we were out of color ink in the printer. It being 2am at that point, we decided we would just stop at CVS on the way to DC and get the pictures. Long story short...2 CVS's later, a lot of waiting and explaining we finally had the photos we needed a little after 11am. The only problem was we were in Gaithersburg and the Colombian consulate in DC closes at 12 noon. We drove straight there, pulled up 10 minutes before noon and happened to find a parking place right out front, walked in and up to the 10th floor, handed over our applications, were interviewed and walked out at 12:02 (phew!).
KIDSAVE'S MAIN DISH EVENT
That same day, Kidsave had a great fundraising event in DC. So, back down the road we went. It was a very cool event and it was amazing to be able to share our good news with many of the people who got to know Jhonatan over the summer. We also got to hang out with fellow host families who are also going through the adoption process right now.
Here we are with our friends, Craig and Beth at the event. Hopefully, our next picture together will be of a reunion with our little colombianos!
PACKING AND TO-DO LIST
I spent Wednesday and Thursday working through our to-do list, while still keeping up with the normal activities of the house! Sometimes I felt like the list was getting longer rather than shorter but I think we have crossed off almost everything on the list!
VISAS (AGAIN)
This morning was back to DC to pick up the Visas. My navigation system in the car was telling me to take Connecticut Ave. but I wanted to take the GW Parkway. I headed that way and the navigation was telling me to get off on River Road but I wasn't paying attention (I was thinking of the aforementioned list, especially the apartment that we still didn't have). I'm so glad I ended up taking that route, it led me down Wisconsin Ave. past all of the embassies....it was a beautiful drive! Picked up the visas and was back on my way to Frederick.
APARTMENT HUNTING
We decided to rent an apartment due to the size of our family and wanting to be able to cook, walk around and have our own space. I had been searching and searching on-line with no luck. The apartments we needed in the part of Medellin where we wanted to be were rented or the companies that had some available were slightly (or more) sketchy. I happened to mention that we were still looking for an apartment to Terry Baugh (Kidave president) and she put me in touch with the lovely Monica in New York who volunteers with Kidsave and happens to be from Medellin and a realtor. She not only found a great apartment for us right where we want to be but her mom is meeting us to give us the key.
We have our tickets, our visas, an apartment and our on our way to being packed. All we need now is our boy!
Stay tuned....next post is from Medellin, Colombia!!
Monday, May 2, 2011
Travel Approval
We received our travel approval today! We will receive custody of our sweet boy on May 13th in Medellin, Colombia (that's right, next Friday). Update later...right now we are buying tickets so we can go to the consulate for our visas tomorrow. Typically, visas are not required for traveling to Colombia but because we will be completing an adoption there, we need special travel visas. Soooo exciting!
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