Author: Zach

Diego and I spent a good part of the morning wrestling. It seemed like a particular guy thing to do. He was full of energy, I was full of energy, so we decided to try some WWE moves using the sofa. He loved it, even when he got a tiny shiner when his eye hit my knee (he tried to do a body slam from the armrest). It was fun, lots of laughter and yelling and hugging.

For so long – three years – Diego has been an abstract thought, the “what if” person in the family. When we adopted them, the girls didn’t know they had a younger brother, much less that the Bienestar had asked us to consider adopting him. So we taught them to pray for him (Let’s pray for Diego. “Quien es Diego? Tu hermano – your brother. Oh, ok.”), but waited until the adoption process was well on its way before telling them we were trying to bring him home.

Now – finally able to play with him, cook for him, teach him, hug him, and laugh with him – I’m struck by how natural it feels. Perhaps this is because we’re already parents, capable (somewhat) of dealing with the ups and downs. Perhaps it’s because he’s been a prayer on our hearts for 3 years.

But part of it is how easy a kid Diego is. I feel that I should qualify that statement because this is way too early in the game to make such statements. That said, any adoptive parent worth their salt prepares for the worst and is happily surprised when the worst doesn’t manifest. In the nearly 2 weeks of being a family we’ve had to do very little discipline nor have had any major meltdown (which, truly, surprises me to no end).

That said, Diego finally cried today. He’s pushed a few boundries (gotta see where the edge is after all) and got a significant timeout. The parenting skills kicked in (try agains, lots of practice, clear communication, natural consequences) and by dinner we were back in shape.

Tomorrow we’ll play some more. We’ll walk, maybe swim a bit, try out new English (Ren’s sneaking in some schooling). I really, really miss my daughters. But I’m happy to wrestle with my son.

This is all the Lonely Planet says about Neiva:

You’ll have to pass through Neiva, the hot sleepy capital of the Huila department and a port on the Rio Magdalena. There’s nothing in Nieva of interest.

Me thinks it might be a bit harsh – but as we chug through our 2nd week in this city, I can’t help but wish (in a little way) that our kidoes were from some nice Caribbean beach.

As Ren mentioned, the rules are different this time around. The whole adoption process went through an evaluation process some months back and one of the upshots/downshots is that judges are more careful and diligent with pouring over the paperwork. We were spoiled with the girl’s adoption, as their paper work barely spent 36 hours in the courts. You constantly had the feeling of the ball moving forward.

In short, we’re very bored. We walk (a lot) and swim (often), but there’s just not a whole heck of a lot to do. We plan to spend a day at an aquatic park (probably Sunday or Monday), and there’s the Disney channel (which Diego loves…indeed, he’s happy to play with games and watch TV most of the day), but it’s still slow. I am able to get some work done (so at least I feel like I’m completing bits and pieces), but it’s not quite the same as 1) Having decent internet speeds to complete work and 2) Face to Face time.

I keep trying to think of this as the job. The job is to wait. You do the job and soon the job will be over.

I love traveling and experiencing new cultures. For sure, traveling for the purpose of adoption is a totally different experience than traveling for pleasure and exploration (your focus is completely different), but you still get to experience new and very odd moments of being a fish out of water. Anyway, I wanted to jot down some observation about Colombia. Actually, I’m not really sure these observations can apply to Colombia at large as my experience is limited to Bogota and Neiva. Take them for what it’s worth.

The People

Colombians are beautiful. Like, all of them. The women are always dressed up (we jean wearing American’s look sloppy) and the men all wear collared shirts. They also really like uniforms. It appears that every job in every field requires a uniform ranging from pastel tacky to slick yet modest. There appears to be two rules to aging: 1) Men get to wear sandals and 2) Women cut their hair short.

As a whole, we’ve found everyone to be exceptionally nice with a conservative curiosity towards us.  People like to strike up a conversation with you once they get a sense of how well you can communicate. Then a flood of Spanish comes flying out of their mouths and I try my best to keep up!

The Cities

I still think Bogota and Neiva are remarkably clean for Latin American cities. It’s not that there isn’t a fair amount of trash (there is), rather, they do a good job of cleaning everything up. Neiva is basically a city of tightly packed homes, occasional high rises, and the scattering of parks and large avenues. In short, it follows the plan of many Latin American countries (there are constant similarities to where I lived in Brazil). Every few homes there’s a little shop – usually a tiny restaurant that specializes in simple lunches of chicken and rice, empenadas and pastels, and beer or juice.

We walk everywhere and traffic is a steady and sometimes precarious stream of buses (hello diesel), taxis, and motorcycles. Colombians LOVE their motorcycles and scooters. Families pack on the; mother’s in high heels, children holding lunch boxes, and weave in and out of traffic. They all wear helmets.

The Food

In general, Ren and I find Colombian food to taste good, if not bland. Typical dishes include lentil soups, chicken in many forms, lots and lots of baked and fried bananas. For that matter, everything is fried. The supermarket has an entire aisle devoted to oil. They’ve two kinds of avocados, the popular one being this huge green fruit 4 times the size of the Haas Avocados we’re used to eating in the states. They’re awesome and I’ve put them on everything I’ve cooked in the apartment.

There are glorious amounts of fruits, many of which I haven’t learned the names of yet. They’re either eaten peeled or turned into juice, typically with a generous helping of sugar.

I’d say we’re fairly adventurous eaters, trying things out in highly questionable (at least from a sanitary standpoint) eating establishments. You can’t be too worried about such things when you live in the country for nearly a month.

The “That Makes Absolutely No Sense”

Traffic lights. In Neiva (and Bogota too), they put the traffic lights before the intersection. Make that a good 30 feet before the intersection. This results in pedestrians having no clue as to what the lights are when trying to cross the street – and crossing streets in Colombia is already a slightly dangerous proposition. This has to be the poorest urban planning design I’ve seen and the only possible reason I can think of for having it is to keep pedestrians on their toes. Not to mention the fact that it is often ok for drivers to disregard the traffic lights altogether and drive whenever they feel they can safely merge into traffic.

Other Fun Observations

When you pay by credit card for anything, you’re asked “how many times”. Stores can basically break up the charge in 12 separate payments charged over the course of the year (with additional interest, of course). Best I can tell, most people do this.

Payphones no longer exist, Instead, street vendors post signs that say “llamados” and chain small, nokia styled cell phones to their stands. You then pay a few pesos to make a call.

The wide array and selection of motorcycles and scooters really is very cool. There seem to be thousands of variations.

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