Trip to Exito by Ourselves and... oh yea... SENTENCIA!

The day started out innocent enough - our regular trip to breakfast in the hotel and then showers. We decided to quit whining about everything and just hop in a taxi by ourselves and head to the mall.

The mall trip and taxi rides by ourselves went well. We were there a bit early at 9:30am or so (stores seemed to open around 10:00 like back home) but Exito was open of course.

We strolled around, picked up some things that our grocery store doesn't carry, and got Elkin a new pair of shoes! (US size 6 if anyone was curious ;).

We hopped a taxi back to the hotel and the phone rang as soon as we walked in. It was the ICBF representative that we had met the day we got Elkin. She speaks no English by the way. All I understood was "Hi, how are you doing?" I answered and then she asked something else at which time I reminded her that I speak no Spanish - she laughed and hung up.

Weird.

Of course that got us excited. What if everything is done here and we got our sentencia (the final paperwork that no one else can get because of the strike)? We decided to call our interpreter in a few minutes.

Phone rang again almost right away. It was the interpreter. "Where have you been all morning? We've been trying to get a hold of you! The lawyer will be there in 10 minutes and you'll be going to Elkin's home town to get everything completed!"

Yipee!!!! BIG surprise. This is even earlier than they estimated. We were just hoping it would happen sometime NEXT week. Next Friday would have been awesome let alone TODAY.

A Colombian-10-minutes later (45 minutes) she showed up and off we were to get the remainder of the signatures on the sentencia and get Elkin's new birth certificate started. Our interpreter couldn't come with us so some of the details of what we did are a little sketchy due to our language barrier (I'm sure it's all fine - everyone has done this several times before).

Our first stop was in a small town to complete the sentencia. Several people, including a judge, had to sign this legal document which to our understanding is our legal adoption of Elkin in Colombia. So at this point, after this document, we believe Colombia sees us as his legal parents.

This document, the sentencia, is what everyone else adopting in the larger cities where the strike is going on dream about having in their hands. It required a judge's signature and since the judges aren't working in most places, the sentencia can't be completed.

Here's a pic of our lawyer and Elkin at this stop:



After we had the sentencia, we traveled to the very, very small town that Elkin was born in. This is where the records of his birth are located and where we had to get the ball rolling on his new birth certificate with our names on it. This will be complete on Monday and is the last legal thing we need to complete in Monteria aside from getting him a Colombian passport.

The government building in this very small town was quite the sight. It was a concrete square building not much larger than a department store bathroom. The ceiling was falling in, old electrical outlets were exposed, a single florescent bulb was the only source of light in the whole room. There were a couple of computers that were all tied into one overloaded outlet.

At one point, Elkin needed to get his fingerprints taken for his new birth certificate. We were led out back where, and I'm not kidding, his fingerprints were taken under a straw hut.

That was quite the adventure.

The birth certificate will be complete on Monday and we can go pick it up then at the same office. After that, we need to get his Colombian passport made up with his new name (which we obviously need his new birth certificate for). After we have that, we can fly to Bogota, get Elkin's US Visa, complete some other various tasks, and then head home.

So yes, this happened much faster than we thought. It's only a few days quicker than our lawyer quoted us last week, but we assumed it would take longer than that.

Best case scenario, we're home with Elkin the middle of next week. More likely it'll be toward the end of the week. So as long as we don't run into a big snag somewhere, this may turn out to be a less-than-3-week trip!

We're still planning on taking our day outing to the beach on Sunday and I think tomorrow we'll go for another swim and get some ice cream at the park again.