Archive for May, 2009

Andres woke for an early feed again, but went to sleep again soon after. We did put him down a bit too soon, as he vomited a bit on his sheets. We made the same mistake after his next feed, putting him down too soon after feeding – we put him on our bed to play for a bit while getting ready, but he rolled onto his stomach and then vomited over it (quite a bit this time), so we had to ask the cleaning staff to change the sheets on both beds.

After breakfast we caught a taxi to a large shopping a short drive away called ChipiChape. We spent the morning wandering around looking at the stores and then stopped for lunch at the food court. Andres was quite content sitting in the Ergo carrier – he even fell asleep for a while. Before we left, we stopped in one of their large supermarkets and did some shopping, supplies for us plus some general toiletries we are going to take to the orphanage as a donation later this week.

It was good to get out of the hotel for a while and stretch our legs. Now that we are more comfortable with Andres (and more importantly, he is more comfortable with us), and we have a better feel for his eating, sleeping (and pooping!) habits, we are going to try and get out a bit more to see more of this interesting city.

Another slow day. Spent the morning reading and napping and trying to not get too frustrated with the internet connection.

Today is a public holiday in Colombia, so not a lot is happening anywhere. We didn’t even bother going out since many places would be closed.

Leanne and Andres sitting by the pool

The other Australian couple here in Colombia at the moment are Greek and George decided that he wanted to cook us all a BBQ lunch this afternoon – what better way to enjoy a public holiday than a barbie? I think it took a couple of days of planning, but they managed to find the ingredients to make a tzatziki and some souvlaki. Unfortunately they couldn’t find any lamb – so had to substitute pork and beef instead. George marinated the meat and also did some chicken – then BBQ’d the lot on the small coal BBQ out by the swimming pool. Served with roast vegetables (Greek style), flat bread (a good approximation), and the tzatziki – it was an absolutely delicious meal.

George (grey top), Enrique (orange top) and the kitchen staff

There were at least 20 of us to feed – we sat around the swimming pool and enjoyed the afternoon. There was even plenty left over for the kitchen staff who helped George prepare the meal. We will have to make a point of visiting them back in Australia (they live in the southern suburbs of Sydney) so we can get some more of that great Greek cooking!

Some of the adoptive mothers and their children (the boy on the far left has two older sisters as well!), representing Italy, Canada and Australia (from left to right)

The rest of the afternoon was spent napping and reading – Andres is still a bit sick and so is sleeping a lot. At least that hasn’t dented his appetite – he is still downing his bottles in good order.

Another quiet morning. Andres woke early again, but after a feed he went back to sleep until after 8am.

Being Sunday, they didn’t put on lunch at the hotel so Enrique (the owner of the hotel) arranged to have some Chinese delivered for lunch which we ate out on the front porch – it was nice.

Transportation Museum

Enrique took some of the other families with older kids (ie not just babies) to a swimming pool for lunch and to spend the afternoon – and also arranged to have a driver take us out to a transportation museum near the airport. As it turned out, with sleeping babies and everything, it was just the guys who went on this trip (one Canadian and two Australians). The museum had a rather eclectic mix of items including planes, helicopters, trains, cars (including an old Ford Falcon!), motorbikes, petrol pumps, and even some prams!

Model Railway - Transportation Museum (less than 30% of the railway is actually shown here)

The highlight was the enormous model train layout they had built, it must have had several hundred metres of track all up, in a complex layout that wound around a room. The attention to detail in the layout was incredible, not just trains and towns, but ports with ships and factories and more.

Transportation Museum

Upstairs was a huge collection of models from a local model making/collecting club – cars, planes, tanks, boats and more.

Ford Falcon Futura at the Cali Transportation Museum

Transportation Museum, Cali

It wasn’t a long visit, but it did help to break up the monotony of waiting around the hotel with not much to do. Driving around Cali is potentially far more interesting anyway – always fascinating to see the various aspects of life in Colombia.

Transportation Museum, Cali

Transportation Museum, Cali

Approaching Cali

A quiet day today hanging around the hotel. Andres woke up just before 4am demanding a feed, so our sleep was a bit disrupted. He’s been snuffling and coughing all night anyway with his cold (which he has had since before we got him on Monday). Most of the kids at the orphanage have been sick apparently. It’s just a cold and he’s still eating and sleeping well, so we’re not overly concerned.

Not a lot more to say really.

The internet has been really unreliable still which has been very frustrating. I’ve still got work I need to do while away – the joys of being self-employed.

At least I managed to get some audio processed for a client of mine, they ran a very important seminar on Thursday night and I let them borrow my portable audio recording unit to record it and left instructions on how to upload the files to the web server. I was then able to download the audio here, then slice it up into more manageable chunks, process it to remove noise and enhance the audio and upload it to their website. Worked well – although it was difficult to get it uploaded with the unreliable connection – but with a lot of patience I got it done.

I am getting further and further behind with some of my other work though, so I will have to start pestering the owner of the hotel to try and get the problems fixed up. The main problem is that this is a long weekend here in Colombia, so nothing much will get done until Tuesday at the earliest. Going to be a slow weekened I can tell!

For some reason Andres woke up quite early this morning – just after 3:45am, yelling for his food. He did go back to sleep for a while – we were worried that this would upset his entire routine for the day, but we managed to stretch things out a little bit so it wasn’t too bad.

We originally had a meeting with ICBF (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, roughly translated as the Colombian Family Welfare Institute) scheduled for this morning to finalise the administrative phase of the adoption process so that it could move to the legal phase. However, we got a call from Magnolia around breakfast time telling us that they had rescheduled until 2pm.

This meant that we could spend the morning relaxing and napping (and doing some work), and Leanne also took Andres for a wander around the hotel in the Ergo for a while.

We went to lunch thinking that we may have to feed Andres, so went prepared with water in a bottle and formula pre-measured in a little container. Sure enough, he started yelling half way through lunch – but was happy again as soon as we got the bottle to him. After feeding and a couple of burps, he typically gets very chatty – making noise and gurgling. This is a great time to be with him, he is so cute and happy.

Magnolia came to pick us up straight after lunch and we drove around to the ICBF offices. We waited for no more than about 5 minutes to be seen and then the interview (with Magnolia acting as an interpreter) lasted no more than about 10 minutes. The social worker was happy for us to proceed and so our lawyer was given the go-ahead to lodge our file with the courts. Our lawyer Judith also speaks no English, but Magnolia tells us she is very good at what she does.

Judith was going to try and lodge the files this afternoon to at least get them into the system, otherwise it would be Tuesday before they could be lodged as Monday is a public holiday here.

We were originally planning on having Magnolia drive us to one of the shopping centres after the meeting, but because it was a bit late, we decided to head straight back to the hotel. The plan was to get Andres ready for having a video chat with both sets of grand parents – it would be early Saturday morning in Australia and late Friday afternoon here in Colombia. Unfortunately, not long after we got back, the internet dropped out and didn’t come back. I checked with the front desk and they said there was a problem with the router and it would not be fixed until tomorrow. This was frustrating since not only were we planning on doing a video chat, I also had quite a bit of work to get done online.

So instead, we fed and bathed Andres and got him ready for bed, then watched some shows on the laptop that

We heard after dinner that Magnolia had called to let us know we had been assigned court 4, which hasn’t been too bad of late, so hopefully things will go smoothly. We probably won’t hear anything more for at least a week – the lawyers don’t like us calling every day for updates.

Tweets from today

Internet is down until tomorrow – cant get any work done – cant talk to family :(

22nd May, 2009 8:18 PM from TweetDeck