Bogota Bound!

Today started just like any other day – Christmas day that is. We were so filled with anticipation we hardly slept throughout the night and awoke minutes before the deafening screams of the alarm on my phone could awake us at 3:55 AM. You would think that a 3:55 AM wakeup would be unwelcome. Under normal circumstances it likely would, but today the circumstances are not normal, today is not a typical day. Today is the day we begin our journey to bring our little boy, Samuel, back to his new home and new familia.

We sprang out of bed, brushed our teeth, got dressed and spent a couple minutes chatting with our kids, Dalton and Amelia. I am certain they probably won’t remember a thing we said to them in their comatose state, but they usually don’t listen to what we say anyway (just kidding, well sort of). We are going to miss them big time. We are hopeful that we can talk to them on Skype over the upcoming month – partially to nag them about homework and keeping the house clean, but mostly just to hear their voices and to let them know we love them so much and are constantly thinking about them.

Jerry, Gerry, Mary Ann and I were out the door by 4:20 AM. I told Jerry I would drive since I am sort of an “expert” when it comes to driving to the airport in the pre-dawn hours. If everyone was not fully awake prior to hopping in a car with me to go the airport they certainly were after the fact (due to my Nascaresque driving skills). Anyway, we made it to the airport, Jerry dropped us off and we made our way to the terminal. After navigating through a couple lines at the American Airlines ticket counters Gerry convinced us to try and change our flights so we could all fly together. It did not take much convincing since Gerry had two flights and he was scheduled to arrive in Bogota at 4:45 PM and we had 3 flights and would not arrive until 8:45 PM. The good news - we were able to eliminate a flight and fly directly to Miami on the same flight as Gerry! The bad news – we were not able to get on the same flight as Gerry to Bogota, so we still did not arrive to Bogota until after 8:45 PM.  We are so blessed to have family like Gerry. He is going to Venezuela on a mission trip this week and will also be spending next week in Colombia to help us out. Thanks so much Gerry, you don’t know how much this means to us! Please keep Gerry in your prayers as he travels and helps orphans in Venezuela.

We were able to hang out with Gerry at the Miami airport for a while. We had brunch at La Carreta, a Cuban restaurant. Gerry and I got the tamales, which weren’t the best, but better than just about anything we could probably find in the St. Louis area (plus when you add enough hot sauce you can make just about anything taste good – just like Wolf chili). While we ate our tamales Mary Ann opted for the Cuban breakfast of champions – French toast, of course. After we ate breakfast we decided we should probably exchange some US Dollars for Colombian Pesos. We exchanged about 200 dollars and received 350,000 pesos in return. I have never held 350,000 of anything in my hands, so needless to say I felt a little special. After we exchanged money we said our good byes to Gerry so he could catch his flight Bogota. Gerry does not fly out to Venezuela until tomorrow afternoon and we likely will not depart for Monteria until tomorrow afternoon so we may try to get together for desayundo (breakfast).  After we parted ways Mary Ann and I found a quiet place in the Miami airport, or in other words as quiet a place as you possibly can find in a busy, international airport where we could sit for the next 5 hours waiting for our flight to Bogota.  During our 5 hour wait I was able to stay up to speed on some items for work, Mary Ann read an entire book and we tested out our Skyping capabilities with Amelia.

Finally, at approximately 5:20 PM EST our flight departed from Miami. The flight was about 3 ½ hours. We passed our time by writing this blog entry, eating tasty lasagna (yes, they serve real food on international flights!), watching a little bit of the latest Spider Man movie and doing a last-minute cram session on our Spanish vocabulary.

Then at approximately 9:00 PM we arrived at the Bogota airport. I don’t know what I expected the airport to be like, but it is a very nice airport. It was very easy to get around. All of the signs contained English. We learned that when in doubt do what the person in front of you does and nodding your head and saying “si” typically seems to work well. After we navigated through immigration we picked up our bags. On the other side of the glass, from the baggage claim area, we could see our driver in Bogota Andres feverously waiving the sign with our name on it. We went through customs and met up with Andres. Andres is very nice and we managed to communicate rather well.  We went by the ticket counter and purchased our tickets for our flight to Monteria tomorrow.

Next we left the airport and Andres drove us to Casa Lanthana, our home for the evening. We were greeted by the owner's daughter who was extremely friendly and spoke very good English. We are now just winding down for the night preparing for the challenges and excitement which will face us tomorrow morning. Buenos Noches everyone! We miss you.

-Jeff and Mary Ann