You can pay to use a cell phone from these guys who have them chained to a vest they are wearing. The modern day telephone booth
Above are some pictures of cultural ways of doing things here. I love the diversity and interesting aspects of different cultures!
Cliff Notes of our day
Our integration meeting went well. Our paperwork is submitted in the courts.
Now… If you want the details, keep reading…
The Integration Meeting
The Integration meeting was today! The other adoption family’s integration meeting lasted about 10 min. Our meeting lasted about 45 min. The translator translated about 25% of it. We worked hard to comprehend the rest which we were pretty much able to do. The ICBF lady likes to talk to us directly in Spanish. My brain was exhausted after that! BUT… it all went well and she approved us to go forward. We signed papers saying we officially will adopt Lanie.
At the meeting, our attorney told us there are 7 courts in Manizales. We will be assigned to one randomly by a computer. If we get in court #3 Scott will have to fly back for court as that judge requires both parents present. We started praying for all other courts at that time!
The Amazing Race
After this, we were off to get papers signed so Scott could leave the country and I would have Power of Attorney for Scott and permission to take Lanie out of the country without Scott. We went to banks in downtown. It was quite different than the US for sure. In the middle of thus, our attorney got the call that some paperwork had come in and we could go ahead and file everything today in court. The courts look at adoption paperwork on Fridays so it would be important to get it in today. This is when the crazy race begin. Our attorney said, “Uno ahora! Rapido!” We had one hour to get the paperwork and get it to the court. Oh my… the next hour could have been in some adventure movie. All four of us and the translator began running literally after the attorney who was running through the CRAZY BUSY downtown of Manizales stopping cars, crossing streets, weaving in and out of people, cars, motorcycles etc. I was thinking… “Seriously – if we get killed the adoption is not going to happen!” Lanie did great. She held my hand and ran as fast as she could with all of us. Then into the car we went. Traffic was horrible so our attorney starts taking back streets up and down hills swirving to miss pedestrians and motorcycles, honking at people, barely squeezing between cars. You would have thought we were beging chased and were running for our lives. We arrived to get the papers, sat in the hot car for about 20 min. and then the race continued. Off we went towards the courts with the same type of adventures. I was wishing for some dramomine! (Scott said I had to post that I was also wishing for his driving after all of that. He drives like an old grandma compared to the people here!) The attorney parked in front of the courts in the street (no parking spot) and ran inside with 8 minutes to submit our papers. We waited in the car. She returned 14 min. later. Our paperwork was submitted and we are in court #7!!!! YEA!!!!! I actally appreciated her drive to get our papers in court! shes been great! Things are happening! Thank you Lord!
According to Gloria, the ICBF lady, our task now is to “relax, sit back, enjoy Colombian and wait… and wait… and wait.” I think us Americans have a reputation for being inpatient and not relaxing…. Hmmm….
We returned home exhausted after over 5 hours of craziness. It felt GREAT to be exhausted and have accomplished something today though.
It feels like Lanie is now ours. We told her her new name is Lanie. They were calling her by her middle name so the tranfer of names will be more significant than we originally planned. She was good with that. I started telling her English words last night. She is picking up on them quickly so that is GREAT! We’ll still use plenty of Spanish as well for now.
Alli and Lanie
It was a good day. Alli enjoyed her morning at the park and market with Daddy. Lanie and I enjoyed a quiet morning before the chaos begin playing games and doing things around here.
At bedtime, I stayed with Lanie most of the night. She lay awake a while quietly, but finally fell asleep. I’ll probably do that a little more although Alli and I shed a few tears beforehand because that means giving up our special reading time together right before bedtime. She loves her daddy too and he can read to her, but that’s always been our special time together. Hopefully in a few days Lanie will fall asleep faster and we can get back to that.
So now we have been released to travel outside of this city and we will explore Colombia. I wish I could post pictures of Lanie. After court, I will!