Journey to Colombia

Saturday, June 21st, 2014
We woke up around 7am, after packing until 1:30am, and talked a bit as Jamie made us our last breakfast at home: bacon, eggs and coffee. There's nothing I like better than the smell and sound of bacon sizzling in the kitchen and as Jamie cooked and I organized our adoption documents at the kitchen table, I thought about bringing Eli into our home and how he will experience all of the sounds, sights and smells of his new life with us. Although FANA is a very nurturing and warm environment, as far as institutions go, our little boy has rarely been outside the confines of FANAs walls. He has shared a room with many other children and all of their sounds and sights. He's been loved and held and fed and changed by a whole team of staff members, rather than a mama and daddy. I'm sure, as wonderful as it is for him and for us, it will be a bit of a culture shock and we will need to allow him some transition time.

After breakfast, we cleaned up our little house for the last time and Jamie mowed our lawn. Our friend, Angela, stopped by with little 4 month old Chloe, to say goodbye for the summer. Then, Jamie and I dressed and carried our considerable luggage down to the back door.

My mom arrived around 10am with my eleven year old nephew, Malachi, to see the completed nursery and accompany us to the airport. Malachi was the first baby in our family and he holds a very special place in my heart. I was only able to get pregnant once, twelve summers ago, and my sister happened to get pregnant at the same time! We would have been due within weeks of each other. Although we lost the pregnancy, we received the greatest blessing in Malachi's birth. I am certain, beyond a doubt, that Malachi was the child that needed to be born at that time. His presence in our family, in many ways, saved all of us: my sister, Malachi's dad, Chad, my self, Jamie, and my parents. We experienced such Love and joy in Malachi's being. He became all of ours and Jamie and I have been fully invested in his upbringing. He is our boy, in so many ways. And now, we have two more wonderful nephews and a beautiful niece to add to that Love. These children and all of the others that we work within our family and at our schools have filled our hearts as we waited for the child who was meant for our home, for our every day and every night. It seems the heart just keeps growing, expanding to embrace each new face, each little hand and gleeful laugh. I feel like loving Eli might just make me burst! All of the walls will tumble and the love will overspill into all the little details, the minutia of my life. I am so excited to bring this child into our world.

For Malachi's part, he is the perfect age to understand and participate in the experience. He was anxious to check out what we used to call "his room" and see how we had transformed it into Eli's nursery. Notice how we left the day bed in the room for Malachi and any other overnight visitors we might have ("Oma", you know I'm talking about you). That was my day bed from the time I turned 13 until we moved it out of my childhood bedroom to our first house in Hamburg, NY. It became Malachi's bed when he was born and we would frequently take him for weekend visits. The bed moved with me to the Hertel Avenue apartment, where Malachi also had a room, and then into our current house in Tonawanda, where he and his sister, Lydia, have taken turns using it on their overnight visits. I like that it is now a part of Eli's space, a tangible connection to his cousins and to his mama's childhood.

At 10:30am, Jamie's parents arrived and helped us load up all the luggage. We had so many bags that Jamie and I couldn't fit in their car with the suitcases! So, I rode to the airport with my mom and Malachi and Jamie went with the Holdens. We all stood in the driveway and embraced, tearfully. It was hard to believe that we were saying goodbye to our little house for the summer, and that the next time we pulled in the driveway, we'd have our son with us!

We got to the airport around 11:20am and I immediately started telling anyone we encountered that we were traveling to adopt our son! Jamie lovingly laughed at me as I kept welling up and telling the story again and again to anyone who asked our reason for traveling. We made it through security with no problems, and waved good bye to our families as we began the careful maneuvering of a bagged stroller (pictured in Dick Holden's hands in the above picture) a carry on suitcase, an over packed diaper bag, and a backpack stuffed with diapers and such through the airport to our gate. Our flight was at 1:25, so we had time to grab one last meal in Buffalo. We thought it was quite fitting that it be at the airport's satellite location of Buffalo's famous Anchor Bar. Our flight began boarding just as we were walking down to the gate, so we got right in line. It took some doing to get my pudgy suitcase into the overhead compartment and our back pack and diaper bag barely fit under the seats, but we managed to do it and we buckled in for our flight to Atlanta, arriving at 3:15pm.

We saved over $200 on each of our flights by opting for an eight hour layover in Atlanta and subsequently, a "red-eye" flight into Bogotá, arriving at 3:40am. Unfortunately, the long layover meant that our bags could not be checked through both flights, so we had to go claim them in Atlanta and re-check them, passing through security one more time, as well. An additional inconvenience was the six hour limit on checking bags before a flight. We had two hours to kill, with seven bags between us, before we could check back in. Surprisingly, this all went very smoothly and quickly, with the help of two rented luggage carts. We grabbed our bags, carted them and steered to an area full of comfy couches and arm chairs where we rested with Starbucks coffees, the laptop and some books  for two hours. At 6pm, we checked the luggage and sailed through security for the second time so that by 6:30pm we were settled comfortably at our gate and I was able to spend the next few hours catching up with the blogging.

One more over-priced airport meal and then we were boarding our plane to Colombia at 11:40pm! The plan had been to sleep as much as possible on the last leg of our journey, but there was very little leg room with our huge bags and we were both pretty restless with excitement. We napped a little on and off, and I watched the whole movie "Labor Day" on the nifty screen on the back of the chair in front of me. The same screen also played music, so I discovered a fantastic Portugese singer Cesaria Evora, and enjoyed an entire album of her sultry, mesmerizing tunes. They served us a hot breakfast around 3am, and I spent the last twenty minutes of the flight utilizing the Berlitz "game" option on my screen to practice Spanish words and phrases!

We arrived on time in Bogotá, exhausted but happy. The nice thing about arriving in the middle of the night is there are virtually no lines to wait in. Getting through immigration was easy, getting out of the airport proved to be more difficult! We had to wait awhile for all of our luggage to make it to the claim area and there were no carts available for our seven bags this time, so it was quite a feat for us to simply move forward with all of our belongings! We had filled out our declaration of goods forms on the airplane as instructed: one per person for the "Impuesto de Timbre Nacional" (tax form) and one per family to register the value of what we were bringing into the country. However, as we were attempting to exit the airport and the forms were being collected, the guard suddenly began telling American families only that they needed one form per person rather than one per family. The form said right on it, in English and in Spanish, "one per family." However, we were sent back to get another form and fill it out for me. Meanwhile, the driver FANA had arranged for us, Patrícia, was wondering around the lobby with a "Holdens" sign and wondering where in the world we had wandered off to! Somewhere around 4:30am we managed to connect with Patrícia, load everything into her van and begin our bumpy ride through an empty, middle of the night city to La Fontana and the Plentitud Apartments, where we would be living for the next two months.

Patrícia was very kind to us, although it was obvious she was also tired, and we did our best to communicate with her in Spanish. For most of the ride, we were quiet, as we took the reality of the situation in, with wide, blurry, sleep deprived eyes. We pulled into the gate at Plentitud around 5am, and Patricía explained to the guard who we were. Next stop was a Porter who asked for our reservation number. Since Maria Teresa de Maldonado at FANA had made the reservation for us, we didn't have a number, only an email from her confirming that she had called and reserved our apartment and giving us the cost per month. We showed the porter the email and he went and made some phone calls. For some reason, there seemed to be an issue and the porter could not find a reservation for us. After 10-15 minutes of his phone calls, we were asked to drive into the complex and wait by an elevator for the administrator to come and talk to us. At this point, I was starting to get pretty nervous. We were well overdue for some sleep and our bodies were aching from the small quarters on the plane and lugging our heavy bags through three airports. I just wanted a bed! Any bed would've been fine...

Fortunately, the "administrator" turned out to be a very pleasant man who said he would "fix it" and seemed to know about our arrival. We said goodbye to Patricía, who hugged me warmly and told us to call her or her husband Jorgé if we needed anything. Jorgé and Patricía have been working with FANA for many years and they are our "go to" tour guides or assistance should we need to locate an item, a person, or a location in the Bogotá area. Their phone number is listed in our travel packet and we will be calling them, in the future, to accompany us on some sight seeing excursions.

The administrator moved us quickly upstairs, out of the garage area, and to his office. He processed our paperwork quickly, we paid our first month's bill with a credit card (this is an advantage to staying here as many of the other hotels only accept pesos), and we were escorted to our apartment. It was almost 6am when I kicked off my shoes and burrowed under the covers of a surprisingly comfy and fresh sheeted bed. I think I remember Jamie saying something about unpacking, but I was asleep before I could respond! He must have followed suite, because we woke, side by side at 9:30am to a room full of luggage and pangs of hunger.

Sunday, June 22nd, 2014
We cleaned up a bit and headed down to the office again to ask about getting breakfast. A new administrator, Luis Guillermo, was on duty and he was very friendly. He sent us across the street to a little bakery/cafe "Pan Pa Yá" for our first Colombian breakfast. I ordered hot chocolate, a ham and cheese omelet, and orange juice. Jamie was more adventurous and went with a soup comprised of a beef based broth with scallions and potatoes and a hunk of beef rib stuck in it! It was actually delicious. The counter waitress who helped us order also convinced us to try a fresh hot pastry which was sort of like a crescent role but when you bite it, warm melted cheese oozes out. It was heavenly!

 Jamie at Pan Pa Yá!

The Plentitud Apartments are literally across the street from Pan Pa Yá, a large grocery store, "Éxito," a two story mall, and the famous "Oma" coffee shop. My niece and nephew call my mom "Oma," as will Eli, so we are particularly fond of the name and look forward to trying the coffee!

After breakfast, we walked into the mall and took out the maximum withdrawal of pesos allowed. Jerri and several FANA families had advised us to do this daily until we build up a bank of pesos to cover our incidental expenses as well as some of the heftier fees for the adoption that must be paid in cash. Our apartment has a safe in it, so we are able to store the cash we don't need each day. We didn't spend anytime looking around the mall, as we were both still pretty tired. Instead, we headed to the grocery store and bought a few things to make dinner and breakfast the next day with. Eating out was getting expensive and our apartment has a sweet little kitchen equipped with a stove top, pots and pans, a microwave, a toaster oven and a small fridge with freezer. Buying groceries was a little more complicated than we anticipated as many of the vegetables looked different than at home and the products we are accustomed to buying weekly were either unavailable or labeled differently (and in Spanish). We kept it simple and left with broccoli, brown rice, a pound of lean ground beef, a package of chorizo sausage, some red peppers, an onion, some chocolate, bottled water, a small bottle of laundry detergent, dish soap, and some sponges for cleaning dishes. We walked everything back to the apartment and Jamie turned on the World Cup and started unpacking. I had a killer headache and still felt quite depleted, so I closed myself in the small second bedroom, in another comfy bed and slept until 4pm!

The evening was spent unpacking the rest of our items, making a simple supper of beef rice and broccoli, boiling water so that we can keep pitchers of drinkable H2O in our fridge, checking in with our families via Skype and FaceTime (both free programs!), and settling into our new living quarters.

Luis, the supervisor, and the rest of the staff here at Plentitud have been incredibly helpful. Jamie's Spanish is much better than mine (I can't speak in full sentences!), but he hasn't used so much of the vocabulary in years and was struggling to ask for the things we needed. Luis and I, despite the language barrier, hit it off while Jamie was sorting out our internet service with the English speaking Maria Christina, and through a series of charades and lots of laughter, we managed to have a crib, a high chair, a small tub for bathing Eli, and an iron delivered to our apartment.

Jamie fell asleep early, after a long day, and I stayed up until midnight blogging and facebook-ing with friends.

This morning we took some pictures of our apartment, all settled in now. We love it here!