I knew I never should have taken a day off from blogging...now I am overwhelmed and avoiding it! I will just do a quick re-cap of the last four days and then plan to do a better job of staying up-to-date from now on!
Saturday: We spent the day with Alison's foster family and went to a wonderful restaurant called El Cafe de la Vaca outside of the city (in Machachi) where we got to sample a lot of traditional Ecuadorian food. I think my favorite was the empanadas...and the little corn cakes....and the roasted corn...etc! The highlight of the trip for Jenna were the cow-spotted toilets that went along with the rest of the cow decor in the restaurant :) All in all, we had a great day getting to know Alison's foster family better and learning a lot about Ecuador with them.
Sunday: We visited an English Fellowship Church that is only 6 blocks from our apartment. It was a wonderful service and we enjoyed meeting people from all over the US that are here in Ecuador for many different reasons. We look forward to worshipping there in the weeks to come and making new friends.
Monday: We visited the historical center of Quito, including a church that was built in the 1500's! The historical churches are just amazing...incredibly ornate and beautiful. Of course, I kept thinking that the amount of gold that was used in the decor of those churches could possibly solve world hunger today...but hey, who am I to question how the pontiffs invested their cash hundreds of years ago?! There is much to see and do in the historical center and I am sure we will go there again during our stay here.
Tuesday: We went to a shopping mall and then to Parque Carolina. Parque Carolina is Quito's "Central Park". It was a beautiful day and the girls got to run off some pent-up energy and we got to enjoy some sunshine. Andy got a nice sunburn on his face and Allie's nose is a little pink....it did not seem that warm out, but at 10,000 feet altitude and at the equator the sun is much closer than you realize!
Today we also met again with our in-country adoption rep who attempted to explain to us where we are at in the adoption process. Basically she told us that our "bonding period" is over now and that the social worker wrote a favorable report that was submitted to the Ecuadorian committee of adoptions. The next step is to get a court date with a judge who will grant us the adoption decree. We are still hoping that we can go to court next week. After that, Andy can go home for a couple weeks and I can continue the process here with his power of attorney. We have a problem with the power of attorney that needs to be taken care of soon, however. As it turns out, there was a typo with my middle name and that needs to be fixed with the adoption committee before we can get the power-of-attorney. The adoption committee meets this Thursday and it can hopefully be fixed then. Please pray with us that it can be taken care of without incident on Thursday!
We have been given the okay to travel a little and do some tourist-y stuff while we are waiting for a court date. We are looking into going to the Mindo cloud forest tomorrow and staying there for a couple days. Hopefully I can find a wi-fi spot so I can keep in touch and share photos of the scenery there! The cloud forest is like the Amazon rainforest...only much closer to Quito and without a lot of the health concerns that plague the rainforest area (like yellow fever). We are really looking forward to going there and seeing a lot of really cool plants and animals. Time to do a little laundry and pack...again. Thank goodness we will be packing much lighter for this trip!
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