Andre passport & soccer camp starts!

Monday July 8, 2024 -Bogota, Colombia (part 2)-

Exciting day. We needed to get up early today, 6:00 to get our children fed on on our way to soccer camp. I can’t wait to hear the reports of how it went.

Awfully excited today. Apparently they woke up at 3am and started getting ready before realizing how early it was.

Dropping off the nimrods at good camp

We did meet another couple of parents who dropped their daughter off. Same age as Nani. They’re from San Diego so there should be someone to connect with. Also, their daughter is adopted as well.

We were told that passport pick up time would be around noon so we had time to come home for some breakfast and put peanut for his morning nap.

Not the whole passport but not a bad picture if you ask me

Passport was a quick trip. Nice for a change. It took less than 5-minutes. Afterwards, we needed to do some administrative cleanup at the doctors office driving across town for a signature but, ok.

Interesting things we’ve learned n this trip:

• Motorized scooters in everyday traffic. This is complete madness. Never mind the obvious of a 2000lb car running into you, but even just hitting a pothole or uneven surface. It’s crazy! Not a great picture below but you get the idea.

• Bicycles motorized with weed whacker engines. See pictures below. This takes some creativity and it works pretty good. You’ll see these guys whipping in and out of traffic too.

Scooter on the main road

Pretty awesome if you ask me. This was a food delivery guy who had to fix a flat.

Pedal chain on one side, weed whacker engine on the other.

Soccer camp report:

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Soccer camp report: 〰️

• Santi - well, it sounds like there were quite a few bratty kids in his group and according to him, lots of inappropriate language. Most of the kids are not from Colombia as most Colombian kids went back to school this week. So a lot more English than we were hoping for and little correction for foul language. He says he had fun though and wants to go back. He thought it as really cool meeting some professionals and the women’s team coach. I’m glad he still wants to go. There was some other stuff that clearly he didn’t know how to handle that we will be working on. I will try to prevent spreading my sarcasm and cynicism to him. I also don’t want to get him in trouble.

• Mariana- I don’t know who this girl is but she made friends! My shy little church mouse! It was funny, after we dropped off, we met those parents from San Diego. We were right that they hit it off pretty good. Apparently, Nani became the Spanish translator for this other girl. Then we heard about these other girls who try to speak English but it doesn’t work out well for them. She says “ oh, they’re so nice”. I really don’t know who she is meeting people like this.

  I’m really pleased they are having fun but we will be monitoring Santi’s situation pretty closely. I know eventually he will be forced to deal with this garbage but man, I just want my 9-year old to get to enjoy his age.

We got our notice that we have an embassy appointment at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Peanut is getting his visa in his passport! Not sure what we need to do beyond that. Besides meetings with social workers down the line. We might be done!