Well… We made it here. It was a weird somewhat interesting with a few adventurous” moments type of day. Thankfully Vilma brought us to the airport and talked to all of those people who told us we has too many bags and who was this child with me. For a short domestic flight you can only have one bag each. We are here two months. One bag is full of toys, art supplies and books. One bag is full of art canvases and items bought here, one bag has our clothes in it and then I have a piece of art packaged up. That’s four bags! Anyways, we made it through all of that. Lanie was over the top excited to fly on an airplane. When we got on the airplane, she was giddy excited to see the sky, clouds and mountains. This is an entirely new world for her. However, she did not like the seat belt she had to wear. In Colombia most cars don’t have seat belts in the back seats and they certainly don’t have car seats for children. i thought we might have a full blown meltdown over that, but she didn’t go quite that far. Her US car seat is going to be a challenge!
On the bus ride from the plane to the airport terminal in Bogota, Lanie says she needs to go to the bathroom. So then the adventure begins… We had a ten minute bus ride, a run through the airport with Lanie yelling, ” tee tee Mami!” and me trying to hold her hand , my backpack and her backpack. We rush into the bathroom only to have her soak herself, me, our shoes, the backpacks and the bathroom floor. Ugh… It was a mess to say the least. I cleaned everything up as best I could. There was a long line of people after us for the bathroom and let’s just say no one went into our stall that had large puddles all over the floor! she had to sit on my plastic folder in the car.
We arrived at our new lodging Hotel of Paris, did a big clothes change, met our incredible representative Martha who had a dozen roses waiting for us, ate a delicious lunch there and headed for the TBshot all in about 30 minutes. Lanie did as well as any kid could getting a shot.
Hotel of Paris caters to adopting families. It’s like a bed and breakfast type of house with an outdoor play area, playroom, three incredible meals/day and your own bedroom and bath. It’s know for great cooking and they were right about that. I won’t loose any weight here! At first I was trying to figure things out here as no oRe gave me a tour or told me how things work (like how do I get water, use wifi, when are meals etc. ) I’m learning as I go and I have much more to learn. It’s different having so many people around who all speak various languages. There are several children here as well. That is good and bad. They can all play, but all of them aren’t the best influences. Lanie is the youngest amongst 5 kids. There is a Dutch family that speaks good English. They adopted 3 children from Colombia who are now all in their early 20’s. They
are here meeting the birth mom of two of the children and exploring their country. They met the mom today. Wow! There is another single mom from France adopting an older girl. She knows a little Spanish and i do too so we had an interesting conversation. She knew some English as well. Adoption is very hard. People say that, but watching it up close through other families and being a part of it has shown me so much more about what it means to sacrifice and love another who is often difficult to love. It’s an incredible small picture of the gospel.
I’ve learned a lot from this process and being here in A foreign world for me. I may do a blog post later on all that the Lord is teaching me. I will come back to the US with new eyes and heart that see things differently.