Second Trip to the Cali Zoo - Day 16

I woke up before the kids & quietly hopped into the shower hoping to get an extra jump on our day. I had time to set out outfits for the kids and change Andres' diaper while Karl also showered before breakfast! This was great because we then were ready to go to the Zoo (2nd trip!) after finishing breakfast and packing up all our stuff to go.

We had a really good time at the Zoo today. We were pleasantly surprised that we did not have any major issues. We were armed with agua, snacks, extra diapers, strollers, camera & one lone antibacterial wipe (why didn't I remember to re-stock?!? Ugh!) That one wipe got us through our little snack time and then I was excited to go to the nearby concession bathrooms to wash our hands with real soap and water. I was horrified that #1 - there were NO seats on the toliets, #2 - I tried to move the kids to the "clean" one and looked over to my horror to see my kid on the filthy one, and #3 - after all that, there was NO soap, not one miniscule drop of soap!!! Aaahh! It was really enjoyable and thankfully the heat was not as intense as our first trip. The kids seemed to really like it and we finished seeing the second half of the animals. But by the time we had one half hour left, the kids were toast! They were quite ready to go home and eager for lunch. (Our kids REALLY LIKE TO EAT - the paperwork we got that said they didn't like to chew and had bad appetites was either really old or wrong!)

A really neat highlight from the Zoo was that a peacock gave us a really cool show! He paraded around in front of us, puffed up & displayed his beautiful feathers for us a couple of times. The kids loved it and so did Mami & Papi!

Oh! I forgot to mention that we received a call from Lucia in Bogota to check on us. I was so excited to hear from her - it was almost like President Bush calling me! Anyway, she told us a few things: to plan to stay pretty close to home the next few days due to the FARC group becoming agitated because of a mass-protest in Colombia/worldwide against their violence. Don't worry, we'll be just fine and are always extra careful anyway!

The better news from Lucia's call was that she expected the family defense advocate (or something like that) to sign off on our case hopefully today and then hoped that perhaps by the end of next week or early the following week that the judge in Cali would sign off on our final adoption decree! (I hope I got all that right! I had to ask her to repeat so I could clarify and get my facts straight to tell Karl.) So, it was excellent to hear the approximate status of our case and to have an idea how much longer we will be in Cali. So I asked "what next?" and she said our lawyer would call when it was time for us to go to the court together for the final decree. Then, we need new birth certificates from the kids' hometown that is not very nearby. Then, we will be ready to fly back to Bogota. Everything depends upon days/hours that the places we need to get stuff from are open. So, we'll see how all that timing works out. We are encouraged to have a glimpse though!

The craft bazarr was okay. Not much that really interested us. A lot of it was stuff we had seen at other stores elsewhere. (Laura, yes please give me the name of the market in Bogota for souvenirs! Thanks!) We brought home two little things.

PS - We sure appreciate the responses from our dedicated readers!!! That was a nice encouragement to us. Keep it up, please! Also, I posted more pics to our picassa site!!! Enjoy!