Today was a very nice day! The weather was great, we did nice things, we were all feeling well again after our bout of illness, and Jakob behaved very well all day and had a great appetite at all meals!
Yesterday we finally understood what it means when he says "tengo calor aquí" and touches his belly: that means he is nauseous and about to throw up. Understanding that has helped a lot!
After having vomited after (or during) at least one meal four days in a row now, today Jakob felt sick only once, and that was before breakfast, so he had nothing to throw up. We read the signals correctly this time, and gave him only half a glass of saft and then waited a while (and took a hot bath) before having breakfast. Then he was feeling much better and ate with such a ravenous appetite that we had to hold back some of his food.
We try to teach him some Norwegian every day, and today at breakfast I tried to teach him the word for "bread" (brød), but that almost made him throw up again, because the sound he made when trying to pronounce it with a skarre-R like daddy, was exactly the same as when he vomits!
After having Fernando (on the left in the picture) take a group photo of us with the Australian family with four adopted siblings and the Italian family who was leaving today, we said good-bye to Irene, Alessandro, Armando and Paola. Paola, who is five, kissed Jakob on the cheek, and at first he wiped his cheek and went "yuck", but a minute later he kissed her back. It was very sweet. Then we had Hans, the guard (on the right in the picture), open the gate to where Larry, our driver, was waiting for us.
Larry, whose father Carlos also worked for the same hotel, took us on a little tour of Cali today. We visited among other places the 25 m tall Cristo Rey statue on top of a hill by the city. (The roads are as curvy and narrow as any in Western Norway; We were glad we went in a private car and not by the chiva you see in the picture!) There we were met by a bunch of catholic fanatics who were chanting and praying and shouting to the devil that he shoud take the financial crisis, the homosexuals, and the prostitutes and begone from Cali!
After three weeks of eating in the hotel restaurant, we politely turned down lunch from the hotel today. First we went and had passport photos taken at the mall for Jakob's passports (one Colombian and one Norwegian), and then we went and got good junk food at El Corral. That was the tastiest hamburger and chicken burger either of us has ever had at a fast food restaturant! We can definitely recommend El Corral as a better alternative to McDonald's or Burger King! Jakob ate and ate, but did not get sick to the stomach.
After lunch Jakob fell asleep and slept for three hours! It definitely looks like the illness is losing its grip on him. He hasn't had any fever today, and he has been in a good mood all day.
At supper he again had a surprisingly good appetite, and he was calmer and happier than he has been at any meal in the restaurant before. Now we are thinking that what we thought was just his impatient nature, may have been an illness-caused distress of some sort (perhaps a pain in his ear), making it hard for him to sit still and eat with us at the table.
It was not easy for him to go to sleep at his normal bed-time, but he was a good boy and didn't try to fool around after we told him it was too late for that. But he was tossing and turning, unable to find a sleeping position, both because he was not sleepy and because it is terribly hot at night here. But Ulf can sing anyone to sleep, and after a few verses of "Byssan lull" even Jakob succumbed!
The pension is getting two new families tomorrow, a Swedish one and a German one. The Swedes, Eva and Thomas, will be our next-door neighbors. We met them just before we turned in for the night. They are getting a lucky child from the orphanage in the morning. We know the feelings they must be having now, and the joy they will experience tomorrow!
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