Two Weeks Home

Settling In

About one week down, and so far everything is going well. Marisol is sleeping all night, eating very well, and getting along with her new dog, Manfred. Manfred is adjusting, but I think it's harder for him than for Marisol. Every time she gets near him, she thumps him on the nose and says "Bop."

And just one week home and Marisol isn't even the newest family member anymore! Joe's brother Tim and his wife Christy welcomed David Alexander yesterday afternoon. Joe's parents got to meet their two grandchildren for the first time less than one week apart! Christy and baby Alex are healthy and doing well. Mari got to meet her new cousin yesterday, but she was more interested in the Cheerios, so we may have to try for a picture this weekend.

Not Sure About This Yet.


Well, Maybe. . .



Yeah, He's Okay.

Best Buddies.

Grandpa Paul and Marisol

Grandma Minnie, Grandpa Paul, and Marisol

HOME!!!

At the airport in St. Louis after flying all night.

We're very excited to say that Marisol is now an American citizen and is getting settled in at her new permanent home here in St. Louis.

It's been a crazy few days, so we haven't posted. We got everything done in Bogota with no problems. I (Joe) went to a soccer game and saw Independiente Santa Fe beat Pasto 1-0, and we got Mari's visa, which was the last step before leaving for the States.

We got to the airport Thursday night and got checked in, but then we realized that we there was a document that we needed for Colombian customs that we had put in a suitcase that we had checked, so I had to go back to the counter and get the airline to bring our bags back so that we could get it. Thankfully, that was the only real problem. The flights were long and crowded, but Mari was great. In fact, the 40-year old American businessman who was sitting next to us seemed to fuss more on the flight than Mari did.

So, now we're home and getting settled in. Elizabeth's mom is staying with us at the moment, and Mari and Manfred (our beagle) are getting used to each other. Everything's great, but we're still catching our breath, so we'll post more about the adjustment process later.

Settled in Bogota

It´s been a few days but we´ve been busy. We are staying at El Refugio in Bogota, where I know a lot of CHI families have stayed before. Marisol had a bit of a rough night adjusting to her new environs, but it seems like everything is fine now. Today we had Mari´s doctor´s appointment and everything is on schedule so far. We´ve really enjoyed getting to know the other families staying here: A French family that adopted an infant left today after six weeks. Another CHI family adopting two siblings, a boy and a girl, who´s very nurturing with the little ones. And a family from Puerto Rico adopting twin three year olds. These girls just crack us up. They are adorable and silly. Joe finally found his hormigas (giant fried ants) at the airport in Bucaramanga and was sharing this evening. These little girls were hanging on him yelling ¨Yo quierro hormigas!¨. We may post some pictures later, but we don´t have wireless here and it´s a little hectic at times.
It has been a bit of a shock for us going from isolated in our own appartment to a huge house with other families all together, but we are really enjoying it. Bogota is so much colder than Buca, poor Mari just about threw a fit when we put the footie pajamas on her last night. An hour later she was back in her regular pajamas and a lot happier. We did like being in Bucaramanga, but after five weeks, we were ready for a change.

Marisol Checking Out Her Passport

We're Out of Here!

Marisol and Mom at the courthouse

As I stated in the previous post, we had our sentencia today! When we met with Yolanda our lawyer this morning, she said she doubted we'd get all the official papers we needed and that we would most likely need to finish up Monday and fly out Tuesday. We were lucky and everything moved fast. Sentencia itself was anticlimactic--we signed some papers with a clerk, and then the judge didn't even ask us any questions. She just said Marisol was cute and had pretty eyes. Then Joe and I just stood there like morons while she talked on the phone. Patricia, our interpreter, had to motion to us to leave.


Next stop was Marisol's updated birth certificate, which we got across the street from the Palacio de Justicia. This moved quickly, but by the time we were finished, the passport office had already closed for its 3 hour lunch break. It was crazy to see Marisol's new name and picture in her passport, especially with the last name "Chambers" on it. She's doing great, though, even after being dragged around to government offices all day long.

So, now if everything goes as planned (ie the airport doesn't mysteriously close, as airports are wont to do here) we'll fly to Bogota Sunday morning. Mari has to get checked by a doctor at the U.S. embassy in Bogota, and then we'll have to get her visa that says she can legally move to the States. Then we'll fly home on the redeye Thursday night and be in St. Louis Friday morning.

After spending the last few weeks just waiting, it's nice to have things finally moving and to have the end in sight. Our time here has been good, but we're really ready to get Marisol settled into her real permanent home. Please just keep praying for us that there are no more bumps in the process now that it's all almost done.

One more week!

Sentencia!!!

We are officially a family of three! This afternoon we'll go to the passport office and hopefully we'll be in Bogota by Monday! We'll update later.

Still waiting...

Thanks for the prayers, but it was not meant to be. We waited Wednesday, but then we were told that it would be Thursday for sure. We waited today, and now we're being told that we'll finally have our sentencia tomorrow morning. We're still hoping that we might get to leave Bucaramanga for Bogota this weekend, but there's a good chance that we'll have to be here until Monday.

Obviously, the whole process is a little frustrating. It would just be easier if we knew a definite time or date for things so we could deal with it, but never knowing anything for sure is hard.

Marisol is still doing great, though. We're just hanging out with her and hoping to take her to her permanent home soon.

Prayer Request

We just talked to our interpreter and she said there is a chance we could have Sentencia tomorrow afternoon, meaning we could leave Bucaramanga Thursday! While we've loved our time here, we are obviously excited to go home! Please pray that we will get Sentencia tomorrow.

Not much going on today. Hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday we'll have a better idea of when we'll be going to Bogota. We're hoping this week. Our paperwork ended up being filed later than we had hoped it would be because the person whose job it is to collect whatever paperwork we needed filed was out sick for three days.

Today we went out to Carrefour to pick up a clay caricature of Marisol we had ordered yesterday. There were a lot of booths set up It mostly looks like her, with the big cheeks and green eyes. When the artist tried to take her picture so he could make it, she got all serious and wouldn't smile, so he did the best he could with the lips. People here seem to really be into clay. The toy sections at the stores are full of play doh and regular modelling clay. I think the only things they have a better selection of in the stores here are foot sprays and powders.

On our way to Carrefour, we came across three iguanas hanging out on the edge of a park. Two of them took off down an embankment before we could take pictures, but one stuck around for a few minutes. They were huge! My older brother had a really small pet iguana when we were kids (he picked one with a gimpy leg because he felt sorry for it, kept it for a year or so and then determined it had cancer or something and let it go on the golf course so it could die free. . .). These ones were about three or four feet long.

So that's it for tonight. We'll hopefully have some new pictures on Flickr.

So, since it's a new month, we have more space available on flickr, and since it's about 1000x faster to put pics up on there than on the blog, then that's mostly where they'll be for now. Check them out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chamberscolombia.

We're still just waiting and hoping to hear from our lawyer early this week. Since there's not much else going on, some random thoughts from Joe:

1. Man, Colombians love mushrooms. At every restaurant, about a third of the items include mushrooms. I just don't get it.

2. There are a ton of American sitcoms on the English-speaking channels here, which has given me time to think about them. Obviously, Friends is a great show and is still great in re-runs, but Frasier and Mad About You still hold up really well also. What doesn't hold up is Married With Children. It helped push the envelope of sitcoms, thereby allowing us to enjoy Family Guy years later, but when you go back and watch it now, it's just not funny. (We've clearly spent too much time sitting and playing on the floor of the same room if I've had this much time to think about this.)

3. I was finally able to find a street vendor the other day selling knock-off soccer jerseys, so I can go home happy now. I got an Atl. Bucaramanga jersey and both home and away Colombian national team jerseys for less than five bucks each.

4. Speaking of soccer, there were UEFA Champions League games on ESPN this past week, and while we were watching the Barcelona-Chelsea game, I got Marisol to say "Barça." So, clearly she has taste.

5. Did you know they made Chevy-Suzukis? There are Chevrolet Samurais and Vitaras. I had no idea they had a deal like that.

Okay, that's all the randomness I've got for now. We'll post again soon.