Bogota January 12 2010

Well, the ICBF Regional Office has disappointed us again . . . we learned today that they will not waive the integration period, which is the formal "getting to know you" time that officially starts the adoption process. We had hoped that, given the girls were with us for 5 weeks in the summer and 5 weeks for the holidays, they would consider us integrated, at least to the level that a family who is meeting their kids for the first time would be after only 8 days! But no, so tomorrow we will begin integration with an official meeting at ICBF at 2 p.m. Hopefully we will finish integration in 8 days, and get our certificate to submit our court papers late next week.

On a happier note, Wendy and Fer started camp at our beloved Fitness Infantil today. They spent from 9-12:30 doing gymnastics, swimming and skating, and from now until the end of January, they will swim and do 2 other sports every day there during the week. The people at Fitness Infantil are so nice and the girls really loved it -- they had huge smiles on as they skated around the studio when we came to pick them up . While they were at camp, Chris and I walked to a new grocery store as we learned from Jorge Ivan and Maria Fernanda that Pomona is kind of like the Whole Foods of Bogota -- very expensive. We bought lunch for us all and came back, and then I had a chance to do an exercise video before we went and picked them up.

After lunch, I played with the girls until their new teacher Laura arrived. The girls had met her in November when we were at the other Zuetana. She is going to teach them English in the afternoons. They took to her immediately and she had a very productive time with them. We heard lots of "how are you?"s, colors and animal names today.

Afterwards, they wanted to go choose their "once" for tomorrow -- kind of like the English elevenses, the name for a morning snack in Spanish is the word 11. So we walked back to the grocery where they picked out some yogurt. They seemed pretty tired when we got back so we relaxed with some TV before dinner, and then after dinner, we read a few books, watched Kitty and to bed. Three and a half hours of exercise definitely help the cause as far as a good night's sleep!

Their mood was overall better today -- a few bumps here and there but generally they both seemed pretty happy. We had some laughs together and it was great to see them enjoy and get involved in their activities so quickly.