Day 32 - Home, Sweet Home

We are home, after what seemed like an endless journey home from Colombia! (We changed flights in Paris and in Amsterdam.)

Jakob was on his best behavior on the entire trip, and the trip was uneventful (i.e., long and boring).


Friends and family greeted us at Bergen airport. This was very touching. Jakob immediately recognized his cousins Victor and Thea from the pictures we have shown him! Their mother drove us home, and then everybody left us alone.


Now we are one tired, but happy family!

We are especially glad to see that Jakob and our dog, Vita, get along very well. We waited until after we had eaten supper before we anxiously allowed the two of them to be in the same room, but we needn't have worried — they became friends right away!

Now we just hope that our luggage, which got lost in Paris, will also make it home soon!

Many thanks to all you who have been reading our blog and sending us encouraging words during our trip! We haven't replied to all of you, but we have appreciated every comment from you!

Day 31 - Going home

Jakob knows that we are going to fly again today. He is looking forward to it a lot and talks about it all the time.

Today all we had to do was to return to the Norwegian embassy in Bogotá to pick up Jakob's new passport, pack our suitcases, and go to the airport. Simple, we thought!

The embassy is half an hour from the hotel by taxi. They had asked us to come after 09:30, when Jakob's documents should be ready. Ulf and Jakob were there at 10:00, but did not get a passport. The person who issues passports had not come to work today!

They said that they expect him to be in the office around 12:30, and told us to come back then. So we went back to the hotel and ordered a taxi for 12:00. We have to go to the airport at 3:00 PM. We are cutting it kindof close now, so we are a little stressed, but optimistic.

We can't go home without his passport, so if we don't get it today, things can get interesting! But if all goes well this time, these are probably the last words we will be writing on our blog before we are home in Norway!

Day 30 - Jakob's first passport

We made some new friends today, a very nice couple from New York who is here to adopt a baby girl from Bogotá. They joined us when we went to a hammock factory after lunch, and then we took the aerial tramway to the Monserrate hill (3 152 m) together. The view from there was spectacular!

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It only took half an hour to get a Colombian passport for Jakob this morning. Reinaldo (see Day 2) accompanied us, and we didn't have to wait in any of the long lines of people, he just walked straight to the head of the lines because he knew everybody in the office.

Now we need only one more document, the Norwegian passport for Jakob, and we can go home!

Day 29 - Walking around in Bogotá

Today we walked around the souvenir market in Bogotá together with another family who is staying in our hotel (Tommy and Anita from Halden and their four year old son from Bogotá). It is a very nice market, but we probably ought to have haggled more than we did!

Later we went to a park near our hotel with a playground,



together with the Dutch family we know from Cali. The park, which was surrounded by many good restaurants (we had lunch in one), was very clean and safe, with park guards patroling all the time. This is obviously a very nice neighbourhood. We missed that type of parks in Cali!

Looking thru the hotel's guest book, we found greetings from many, many Norwegian couples who have become families here at this hotel. Right now we are two Norwegian, three Swedish, and three Dutch families here. Most families stay here for six weeks or more, because adoption in Bogotá takes longer than in Cali. Some choose to spend two or three weeks on an island in the Caribbean, where (unlike here) it is warm and sunny, while they wait for the court's decision.

Day 28 - Zipaquirá

We have found out that we have become spoiled during our stay at Hotel Stein in Cali. This morning we went to breakfast and ordered scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes, and the waiter just looked at us like we were idiots, and said "Do you have cheese? Do you have the tomatoes?" It turned out that the hotel Halifax does not offer its guests any kind of meat, cheese, or vegetables for breakfast. They provide access to a big refrigerator in the kitchen, and the guests are welcome to fill it with whatever they want to have for breakfast the next day, if they go out and buy it themselves. Among all the hotels that we have stayed in, this is the first with such an arrangement. We wish they would have told us on our first day!

Other than that, the hotel is fine, and we do prefer it to the one we stayed at on the way to Cali.

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On the first day with cool weather, mami got a tan and daddy got really sunburnt on his neck and forehead. It wasn't really sunny, and it was cool, so we did not notice the sun, but of course, both Bogotá and Zipaquirá lie 2 640 m above sea level, and without protection we got burned even without direct sunlight and even after three weeks in Cali's heat.

Jakob was wearing a cap and long sleeves all day (doctor's orders: no sun!), so he is fine. He probably can't get sunburned anyway, due to his dark skin.

Jakob is now back with Paola. Today our two families rented a van together and went on an excursion together to a big park called Parque Jaime Duque, and to the old city of Zipaquirá and the Cathedral of salt there (Catedral de Sal Zipaquirá). From the outset, Paola (5) and Jakob (3) were holding hands, and they also kissed each other on the cheek several times. (Let's hope Marie in Cali is not reading this!)

Day 27 - The first flight

Today we paid the bill for the three and a half weeks we have stayed at the hotel in Cali with full pension and laundry service. They promised us a 5% discount if we paid in cash, so we said "why not", and while Jelena packed our bags, Ulf took Jakob on the arm and walked the 350 meters up the street to the nearest ATM.

There he took out several million pesos, all in 10 000 pesos bills, which was the biggest note the machine would give him. (The stupid machine would only let him withdraw a maximum of 400 000 pesos per transaction, so when Ulf finally had enough, a rather long line of impatient people had formed behind him, and they were pointing at their watches and glaring at him as he walked away.)

This amount of money was impossible to fit in a wallet, so Ulf filled his pockets and the lining of his trousers with wads of money, and walked quickly back to the hotel, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was every mugger's dream. It went well, but his clothes were soaked with sweat and he had to take a shower as soon as he reached the hotel. (Not just because he was nervous about being robbed; the facts that he had to carry Jakob all the way and that it was 35 degrees outside, as always, probably also contributed to the perspiring.)

After paying the bill, we gave gifts (mostly money, plus cute personal cards that Jelena had made) to half the staff (the ones who had helped us the most) and said goodbye to all the other families at the hotel. Then we went to the airport.


Jakob did not mind flying, and the whole flight went very well. At the hotel in Bogotá we met the Dutch family who had left Cali three days before us, and five or six other families with children they are in the process of adopting. We spent a pleasant afternoon and evening with them at the hotel terrace, because the weather did not encourage us to go anywhere. Shortly after we had checked in, it started to rain. But we had almost forgotten what cool evenings are like, and enjoyed it very much.

Jakob immediately found some new friends among the other adopted children, so he seems to like it here. But most of all we are looking forward to coming home. Our current Estimated Time of Arrival at Bergen Airport is Wednesday at 5 PM!

Day 26 - Blood and sutures

Today we went out and bought wine so we could celebrate the end of our adoption case together with our new friends, the other four adopting couples at the hotel, and Alain and Bernadette, the French couple who stays here for two months every two years.

When we came back from the shop, we relaxed on the terrace with the other couples, while the children were playing. Suddenly we heard Jakob's voice crying from inside the hotel. We both went inside, and our crying child came running towards us, blood running down his forehead, nose, cheeks, and mouth, making a trail of blood drops on the floor!


We reacted as any sensible parents who experience this for the first time with their first child, would: We panicked!

We cleaned his face with water, localized the wound to his forehead, and put a band-aid on the cut. Then we took Jakob in our arms, and ran to the clinic 400 m up the street, where they have an emergency room. Despite the language barrier, we got the best possible treatment for our son once we showed them our Europeiske insurance card.

And though the visit to the emergency room was expensive (over 700 000 pesos), apparently we had not overreacted. The doctors said that it was a deep cut which needed stitches. But because Jakob is black, they did not want their regular pediatricians to do the sutures, they had to call in a specialist in plastic surgery, to sow up the wound in such a way that it will not leave a white scar on his forehead. (Incidentally, the plastic surgeon was white.)

Later, we heard from the other children what had happened. The bigger children had been playing with Jakob, pushing him around in a baby stroller, which he enjoys a lot. They had lost control of the stroller on the stairs outside our room, and it had raced down the wheelchair ramp with Jakob in it, so his head hit the cast-iron bench at the bottom.

After we came back from the hospital, Jakob wanted to play more. So Marie came to our room where they played peacefully until his bedtime. Then all the parents gathered in the sitting room and drank some wine and had a really nice chat about the things that we are all going through. We were even able to laugh about Jakob's dramatic last evening here, knowing that it won't be the last time he gets hurt. But the first time is really tough on the parents!

In the end the day ended well, just like our stay in Cali. (Tomorrow at 10 AM we will be leaving for Bogotá.) We like to think that we have made some new friends during these three weeks!