January 19, 2010 -- Cooking Class

The girls had a good morning -- after a little resistance they got dressed and had a full breakfast before leaving for Fitness Infantil. They were certainly well-rested after 11 hours of sleep! This morning they did swimming, karate and gymnastics.

After we picked them up we had lunch and then puttered around the hotel. For awhile Wendy and I watched African-American hair care videos on youtube while Chris and Fer looked up the nationalities of all the players in the Australian Open -- to each his/her own! The girls were really excited because at 3:00 we were scheduled for a cooking class with Laura, who does activities and tours as well as teaches English. Per ICBF's instructions, they have had no English classes, but we thought this would be fun.

Here are some pictures of us in the class. The food was "rico!" (delicious!) and we had a great time.









Unfortunately later in the day was a little tougher. The girls apparently felt that the 4 empanadas and 2 arepas they each ate during cooking class were not enough of a snack and they wanted to buy an extra yogurt to eat this afternoon when we went to the store for their "once" for tomorrow. They were pretty annoyed and not that polite when we said it would be only one! Fer recovered herself enough to say thank you for the yogurt that we were buying, but Wendy didn't, which meant we didn't buy her yogurt at all -- they will have to share tomorrow. They were both very angry (it is interesting how Fer often takes on Wendy's causes) and refused to hold our hands crossing the 3 streets on the way back. Fortunately none of them were big ones, but still it is dangerous. So consequences are in place and we'll see how it goes! Ah, parenting. :)

And, all this happened just in time for our meeting tomorrow at ICBF! At least we will have a fresh "real family" situation to report on, along with all the fun stuff we have done in the past week. Hopefully all will go well in any case and we will be on our way to the courts by tomorrow afternoon.

UPDATE: Well, just as I finished typing the above, Wendy came to find me to say very firmly that it was time for math homework! As I went to the room with her, Fer came out and said, "I'm sorry." Wendy then also apologized to both of us, and we spent the next 40 minutes working on math! They were lovely at dinner, we read for about 40 minutes after, and then when we said it was time for bed, Wendy told us that there wouldn't be any Kitty and we confirmed that. They went to bed very willingly and are now talking quietly. So, that was a pretty amazing turnaround!