Saturday

Once again, not much going on these days. I tried to take Joe and Leah to the Botanical Gardens on Thursday but after the taxi dropped us off there, we discovered they were closed for the rest of the day due to an event that was happening there so our outing was kind of a bust. Oh well, we will try again soon. Friday was Joe’s birthday so we told the hotel we wouldn’t be there for supper and went to a restaurant close to the hotel instead called Archie’s for pizza and beer instead. It was yummy!

Since Wednesday we have been helping a couple of new U.S. families get oriented to the hotel and to Bogota. They are both at the end of their adoption process as they adopted outside of Bogota but have to come here for the last few steps like the medical exam at the U.S. Embassy here in Bogota and the visa to get into the U.S. for the baby. One family is from Tennessee and the other is from Texas so there are lots of southern accents around right now. Since they only have a couple of steps to go by the time they got here, they are only staying for a few days but its fun to have other American families here, even if its for a little while. Even though we have only been here for a few weeks, its amazing how much you have to tell new people! It makes me feel like I got living in Bogota down pat. Who would have thought that I would feel so comfortable living in a foreign country that doesn’t even speak English? Of course, I don’t take that to seriously because I know I am only comfortable in this tiny section of this huge city although I know I can get myself back to this tiny section from anywhere in the city which is important too. Kerry and I agree that this is a trip for the record books and we will always look back at our time in Colombia fondly. Even if our time here was horrible, it would still be hard to think poorly of a country that produced our beautiful, beautiful daughter too. Colombia will have a special place in our hearts for the rest of our lives and I have a feeling that I will be paying a lot more attention when Colombia is mentioned in the news or I see a headline about Colombia.

Bogota people are generally friendly and want to help but finding someone who speaks English is hit or miss. Usually between our limited Spanish and their limited English, we get the message across. The younger people tend to speak some English and I suspect they took some English in school. In the grocery store the yesterday, a teenage boy that was bagging the groceries was practicing his English on us. It was really cute because he was fairly embarrassed about it but you could tell he really wanted to speak it with us.

We are careful in the taxis as you don’t want to get lost in this huge city so when we have the hotel call a taxi for us, we will either write the address down or have the hotel staff member tell the driver where we want to go. We always carry hotel business cards with us so when we are ready to go home, we hail a taxi and just give them the card. That way we ensure there is no message lost in translation. Taxis are cheap here and a 15 minute ride somewhere costs about $5. Almost everywhere we have gone has cost less than $7 to get there. The big difference about riding in taxis or cars here is seatbelts and car seats for the kids. Seatbelts are only required for those in the front seats and you are lucky to even have seatbelts in the back seats. Kids cannot ride in the front seats like at home although I can hold the baby and sit in the front. Although we heard there was a car seat law approved recently, there is no evidence of it. I haven’t seen a car seat since I got here. The boys sat in the back either in our laps or in between us and one of us just held the baby. It was strange and felt very unsafe when compared to our standards but riding in taxis would be very difficult if there was a car seat rule (i.e. we would have to bring car seats with us to the tourist destinations so we could use them on the way back. How would that work???)

Kerry was also interested in motorcycles here. In Bogota, it is very advantageous to have a motorcycle because the car traffic here is bad like in any big city but here, motorcycles are able to weave in and out of the traffic and basically can make their own lane. For example, if there are 2 lanes in the road, a motorcycle can go between them, around the outside lane or around the inside lane. It is not uncommon at a stop light to see a motorcycle sitting between 2 cars on a 2 lane road plus another one on the far inside or far outside. It is also not uncommon to see the motorcycles continue up the ‘middle’ lane far up into traffic after all the cars have stopped. They do have to wear a helmet and if they are working for a company, they have to wear jackets with a registration number on it. Motorcycles are used a lot here. You see a lot of pizza delivery and other delivery boxes attached to the back of a motorcycle which makes a lot of sense because they can get through traffic so much quicker than a car.

More later,
Cresta