Feb 16 Bogota -- New Birth Certificates

We continued our paperwork journey today with a trip with our lawyer Jorge Ivan out to the civil registration center in Usme, where the girls birth certificates were registered. The next step in the process is to officially change their last names to ours. It was quite a drive from Zuetana -- maybe 45 minutes -- at the very edge of the city. The area seemed quite poor and crowded, and the civil registration center was not that busy as far as how many people were waiting, but everything moved very slowly. There were probably 3 couples there with very new babies, wanting to get birth certificates and officially register their children. Chris and I were both imagining how the girls' parents must have done that for them 8 and 10 years ago, sitting for hours and waiting with a tiny baby for the paperwork to get done.

The girls were impressively patient throughout -- and it did take awhile, nearly 3 hours. At one point we thought we would only be able to get Wendy's certificate today and have to go back for Fer's because there was a problem with the computer, but fortunately they got it back up and running and we left with the needed 6 official copies of the new certificates.

So the girls are now officially Wendy Dayanna and Ludys Fernanda Weeks Lankenau (following the Colombia custom of 2 last names, the first the father's and the second the mother's). They were not very pleased at the idea of losing their Asprilla, which we totally understood, and we heard some grumbling about our last names being "feo" (ugly) compared to "bonito" Asprilla. But it's the law here to make the change in this way, and also their psychologist and Manuela strongly felt that having the new last name is important symbolism for them of joining a new family.

Here are some pics of Chris signing the documents to change the birth certificates and of the area nearby. True to patriarchal culture, my signature was not needed!