Exploring Bucaramanga

The past two days we've gotten out and explored a little more. Yesterday we took a taxi downtown and walked around a lot. We started at the Bolivar museum and ended at the Mega Mall, with brief stops at the Parque de los Ninos and the hospital where Marisol was born. (You can tell this is Liz and not Joe because I will not be bothering to put symbols or accent marks over the Spanish words. . .) Today we walked to a different shopping center--Carrefour--which we've found to be superior to Exito. We also ate steaks at the food court (!!!!). Mostly the food here has been fine, but we're starting to get tired of eating out and cooking with a smaller variety of foods at the grocery stores here. What I miss the most is raw vegetables, especially salad. The fruits here are really good, though, and available through little stands on most street corners (along with cell phone minutes and lottery scratch off tickets).

Yesterday we also finally found a Crepes & Waffles, which we'd heard about from other blogs. We're going back this weekend--it was SO GOOD! Marisol finished off a kid's crepe with jamon y queso all by herself, then ate most of a mini waffle with arequipe (YUM!). We accidentally bought a tub of arequipe our first trip to the grocery store because we thought it was peanut butter. It's basically dulce de leche or caramel. Very tasty. Here they spread it on thin crispy pancakes as a dessert.

As far as adoption stuff, our translator's update of "Monday or Tuesday" became "next week--don't worry", so we figure we aren't going anywhere for a while. Hopefully we can be in Bogota at least by next weekend, but it is starting to look like our five weeks here will turn into six weeks. Oh well.

Here are some pictures from the last couple of days:

Downtown Bucaramanga

Parque de los Ninos. Marisol was taking a nap.

Finally awake, but not ready to chew.

Happy to be out of her stroller.

Green jello soul patch.

Father-Daughter bonding.

Reggae Hair Style. Rock 'n' Roll!