Last Night in Cartagena

The single worst thing about the Hilton is that we have to pay for internet access (oh, and you have to pay for bottled water). And it isn’t a token fee either. It kind of burns me up a little, particularly when I know there are lots of places in the States that I can get online for free. Our time runs out tonight at about 11:45. So, I am hoping we can get this one done before then. We should, since we having done anything except swim and lay around.

When we woke up this morning, Luke wasn’t feeling well. He “gave back dinner” twice this morning. He blamed it on the hot dog with lettuce I brought him for lunch yesterday. Could be. He didn’t eat much at dinner either. Additionally, Andres had about the worst “blow-out” we have ever seen. Traci even had to wash his jammie bottoms. I think we are going to have to watch his fruit and bean intake. Those are two of his favorites and he ate a lot of that yesterday.

So, this morning for breakfast it was just me, Maria and Andres. They were pretty good and I didn’t have too hard of a time managing them. I pretty much stuck with coffee and fruit, but the kids ate a lot of my fruit.

The day was about as perfect out as you could ask for. Maybe a little hot. Maria even asked if we could go to the pool this morning (like we had other plans). Again, I was kind of on my own with Maria and Andres for about the first 20-30 minutes at the pool. They were good and took turns jumping into the pool and onto papi. Luke and Traci finally made it down and Luke swam for a bit. He’s feeling a lot better, but only swam a little bit. He also spent some time in the shade playing game boy.

We had a late breakfast, so I only gave the ninos a quick snack before it was time to take a nap around 1:00 p.m. Traci and Luke got room service and I went on my afternoon trek for money. I believe I mentioned this yesterday, but the nearest ATM is about 1 mile away. I enjoyed my little hike yesterday and was looking forward to today’s stroll. As we are kind of on a peninsula, it is kind of hard to vary my route, but I still I ended up overrunning the bank by about a block. On the way back, I grabbed a chicken empanada from some guy selling them on the street in front of a restaurant. With a bottle of water in one hand and my empanada in the other, I continued walking home. I think it had a lot of jerk seasoning in it as it kind of tasted like that and the innards were yellowish. It was quite tasty and I probably would have had another if I hadn’t walked away. Still, it is probably best that I just risk eating one at this point. We have a lot of traveling tomorrow.

My impressions of Cartagena are that it is kind of touristy, but still not nice enough to spend a bunch of cash to vacation to. I mean, there are some nice resorts (ours, and I hear Las Americas is nice too), but the hotels downtown are kind of “stay at your own risk.” If you are going to stay downtown, there are some smaller places that I have heard are nice. I even walked past a couple places that looked pretty decent. However, these places have no pool and are a bit of a walk to the beach. Oh, and if you like beach vacations, this is definitely not the place. It looks like they have done a lot of work to expand and improve the Hilton beach, but the sand is pretty poor and there always seems to be junk in the water. Cartagena is probably more fun for the young and adventurous – not a couple of old people dragging three kids around. I told Traci the other night that it is a good cruise ship stop, but a day or two in Cartagena is enough. Nevertheless, if coming to Cartagena, I give a strong recommendation for the Hilton where we are staying. Lots of people here speak at least some English. The place is extremely clean and all of the staff have been great. If you don’t feel like venturing out, they pretty much have everything you need right here. If you do want to get out, there are lots of little restaurants within walking distance. Around a mile away, where my ATM is located, there are some pretty nice, higher end shops and boutiques. Traci here: And the Hilton workers come up and tell you when you are getting burnt. One Hilton lady was extremely concerned about Luke today when she saw he had pink skin. I appreciated the fact that she was worried. It’s nice that others here will tell you when you are burning as it’s tough to know. What she didn’t know is that burn was from 4 days ago and his skin takes on that glow all summer long. So as not to offend, Luke put his shirt on and shortly thereafter, we left the pool. I will caution those of you who may come here for adoption purposes. . . you will definitely get a lot of looks here. People seem to be quite fascinated with two, overly white American adults carrying around two clearly Colombian children. We’ve had questions asked directly to us and you can tell others are questioning privately amongst themselves. It makes me go back to my question of how Colombians really feel about us coming in and taking the kids. Bottom line, I’m sure we’ll get similar looks in the U.S. It just feels different here as our children are a part of this culture.

We’ve had some comments asking about a timeline for when we can expect to return. The answer to that is that there really isn’t one. We did luck out in that our legal papers were filed in a smaller court outside of Bogota which means things should progress a little faster. However, nobody can tell us what “faster” means. I’m holding out a happy thought that our “sentencia” will be on Wednesday after we get back. If that happens, there is a slim chance we could be home Saturday/Monday/Tuesday time frame. After “sentencia” (when we get the final adoption decree) we have to get new birth certificates in Ubate and take the kids to get passport photos, passports, physicals and visas. This process takes about 3-4 days depending upon how quickly you can move. Traci: I love Matt’s optimism. I hope he is right. However, I am praying for Sentencia by week’s end. That would put is home before Father’s Day! Regardless, Luke and I have already decided that we can’t wait to come home and have Jose Peppers cheese dip and salsa. My nighttime dreams are starting to be infiltrated by dreams of food we are missing!

Yes, it all sounds like a long time but from talking with some of the families from France and Spain, they usually expect to be in country for 5-8 weeks. I don’t recall the name of the agency most of them use, but it really makes me appreciate the people we are working with at CHI. I was going to come home a little early with Luke if it looked like it was going to go too far into the 4th week. However, now that we are down here and as much as Luke wants to go home, I can see that I had better stay. It’s not the safest place for a blonde lady with two little kids. Also, Traci’s Spanish is barely good enough to get around. In any event, I do not expect it to run that long (fingers crossed and knocking on wood). Traci: Hey. . .I’m working muy hard on mi espanol! I don’t know what Mateo is talking about! So what that I say things in VERY broken sentences and don’t always make my subjects and verbs agree and sometimes mix up my el and la with words. I actually thought I was doing pretty good until I just read that comment from Matt. My bubble has burst!

Dinner tonight – pasta, which the ninos have no taste for. So, we loaded them up on as many side items as we could find to their liking. Andres doesn’t seem to like a lot of meats. He will eat chicken, but doesn’t seem to like red meats or fish. He is supposed to be on a protein heavy diet and so far that is proving difficult.

That’s pretty much it from Cartagena. It was fun but I think we are all kind of glad to be heading back to Bogota. It isn’t really that we enjoy Bogota that much, but leaving Cartagena represents crossing one more hurdle before we can come home. Happy birthday to my Grandma Hazel – I know it is on 6/2, but you will probably read this tomorrow and there is no telling when we will get online.

We didn’t take too many pictures today as they are all starting to look the same. Hopefully, things will be a little more interesting when we get back to Bogota.

The 5 of us at out last dinner at the Hilton:


Matt, Luke & Maria at dinner


The guys in their cool Hawaiian shirts.


This is Maria in a full blown pout. I can't ever remember what this was about. She really hates it when you tell her "no." It can even be a nice "no," like "oh, no thanks" or she will pout and cry like she is being punished. I'm afraid this is something everyone is just going to have to get used to (particularly the grandparents with soft hearts).