Llegamos en los Estados Unidos!

We finally arrived home safe and sound after an entire day of traveling...literally. We left the apartment at 3:30 am and did not arrive in NY until approximately 10:40pm and then had to wait for our luggage.

Of course, our trip home did not happen uneventfully...we had to go through countless number of security checks, bag checks, passport checks, numerous questions of why we were in Colombia....and of course I almost got in trouble for overextending my stay in Colombia. We found this out when we tried to go through emigration. Apparently when we arrived in Colombia, the immigration official put the wrong number of days that I was going to be in the country. He wrote down that I would be there for 30 days instead of the 56 that I told him. This caused a commotion when I tried to leave...luckily Tanya's passport had the appropriate number of days written in it, we had our original travel itineraries, and there was a super nice man who spoke English that could explain the situation to the emigration official. After some discussions amongst themselves, we were finally given permission to leave. Phew!! I really did not want to be interrogated or detained or whatever happens if you overextend a stay in another country!

Then we had our lovely 7 hour layover in Miami and when we finally boarded the plane, we were informed that a light was burnt out in the console and they had to get maintenance back on the plane to replace it and sign off on it. Tanya and I thought we were never getting home. We just hoped and prayed we wouldn't arrive at JFK and find out our luggage was missing. Luckily all our luggage was accounted for and we finally parted ways...It has been a wonderful 8 weeks. Many thanks to everyone at Gladney and Superkids for allowing us this amazing experience!!!

Todo lo bueno se acaba

Well friends, the time has come for Tanya and I to leave the wonderful city of Cali, Colombia. The past 8 weeks have been unbelievable and the time has flown by. It seems like just yesterday that we arrived. We have grown to love the city, the food, the people, and the kids. We take with us fond memories of all our experiences here and would love to return one day! Unfortunately it has been raining here pretty much all week, but one of our friends here told us that it was God crying because we were leaving Cali. :)

Our last week here has been fairly uneventful. We contemplated various trips to other areas of Colombia, but decided to just relax and enjoy Cali one last time. Over the weekend, we ran last minute errands and finished all the projects on our to do list. We also went to a local park where artists display their work every Sunday and admired their paintings.

On Monday, we delivered all the projects and said one last good-bye to the kids at Oscar Scarpetta and Chiquitines. On Wednesday we went to el Zoológico de Cali. Unfortunately it rained for most of the day, but we still had a great time seeing all the animals. Last night we tried Colombian perros calientes for the first time. It was pretty good but very different than American hot dogs when it came to the toppings (cheese, bacon, pineapple salsa, crushed up potato chips, and ketchup, mustard, mayo if you wanted).

This morning, the pregnant mothers invited us over for breakfast and gave us a little gift of chocolates :) As we were leaving, one of the volunteers was arriving to help lead the exercises! They had seen our exercise posters and really liked them.

Chao Cali! Nuestra experiencia fue maravillosa. Muchas gracias a todos los amigos y amigas de Colombia por su amor, risas, y amistad!!

Here are some pictures of us being silly from the zoo:

El Fin...Casi

This week was technically our last week volunteering at Chiquitines and Oscar Scarpetta. However, we still have a few loose ends to tie up so we will be visiting all the places again next week.

Our last day at Chiquitines was on Wednesday. The staff had flowers and a cake for us at lunch. We really contemplated smuggling some of the babies home with us!! We will really miss working with them and seeing their amazingly cute smiles! One of the little guys we have worked with has gained a lot more weight and is developing more of his personality every time we see him. We did not get to finish making the exercise folder for the little girl with spina bifida due to some of the pictures not being printed so that is on our list of things to do this weekend. That night, we went and visited the little guy who was adopted! It was the night before he left and it was great to see him! He has bonded so well to his new mom and dad and it was such an awesome experience to see him so happy!

On Thursday, we had a meeting with the staff at Oscar Scarpetta to go over the work we have done with the kids there. They were all really happy with our work and thought it was a great experience from both sides. We also brought in a piece of softer flooring for the salacuna where the babies can play so they are not on the hard concrete floor and jump ropes for the older kids. Along with the fun stuff, we brought in the last two exercise posters for the medianos y jardin. They also had a farewell luncheon for us, which was extremely touching. Representatives from each sala came up to give us cards that they made. We hated being the center of attention, but really loved the fact that we have been able to form such great friendships and bonds with all the kids here. We even attempted a little inpromptu thank you speech in Spanish in front of everyone!

That afternoon, we gave our last exercise and massage session to the pregnant women. It has been really fun working with them and they all expressed their gratitude. Over the past couple sessions, they have started opening up to us more and having more conversations which has been great. We are almost done with creating an exercise poster for them. More snafus with our pictures kept us from delivering the poster this morning. Oh well. Just add to our list of projects for this weekend...

Today was our last day at Oscar Scarpetta. We went with some of the "externos" and "internos" to see Bodies at el Museo de la Tertulia. It was interesting and fun, but hot and tiring at the same time. The kids all seemed to really enjoy it. And what's not fun about cramming about 80 kids and about 10 adults into one school bus on a hot, hot day?? After we got back to el Instituto, we spent the rest of our time hanging out one last time with some of the older kids. We jumped rope, we chatted, we took lots of pictures, and we went to play with the babies. Then we had to say good-bye...but of course we will be back next week because we have to bring in our makeshift balance beam for the younger kids and pictures for the older kids. This is the last of the tasks on our "to do" list for this weekend.

Now for lots of pictures from this week:

All the kids at our farewell luncheon

Our thank you "speech"

All of the thank you cards we got from each sala

The babies having fun on their new playmat

Chilling on the new playmat

Us with some of the older girls and babies

Tanya working on the exercise poster for the medianos

Anita working on the facial exercise poster

Us working on the jump ropes

Us with one of the "niñas grandes" with a thank you card she made for each of us

On the bus to see Bodies. There were lots of kids sitting on laps...

Double dutch

Tanya with a bunch of the kids

Anita with some of the kids

A todos los niños y niñas, les queremos mucho y les extrañarémos mucho!! Nos encantaba trabajar con todos y la experencia aqui fue muy chevere. Solamente tenemos una semana mas... (To all the kids, we love you very much and we will miss you very much!! We loved to work with everyone and the experience here was great. We only have one week left...)

Una Semana Bacano!

Last week I talked about two very exciting events that occured with the children that we work with here. Well this week, we would like to share with you another exciting moment that has occured.

So as Anita and I have mentioned several times before, the babies that we work with both at Chiquitines and Oscar Scarpetta present with some developmental delays. One of the younger babies that we work with at Oscar Scarpetta was unable to roll from supine to prone ( from the back to the stomach), sit or position into quadruped independently. As of the second week of working with this baby, he was able to sit for short periods of time independently and even began to intiate rolling independently. As of today, this baby is able to roll, sit for longer periods of time and position himself into quadruped independently. In addition, in his first attempts to learn to crawl he has began to perform what we call the worm crawl. He has begun to move both his knees at the same time and then both arms, so it kind of looks like he is performing the worm. But he is definitely moving on his own, and we are sure that it will not be long till he is full blown crawling.

At Chiquitines, we had the pleasure of attending a play and graduation ceremony for the older children. They were soo adorable and they sang very well. Five children graduated from pre-school and one recived an honorary certificate for her great work. We were also able to experience a Cumbia performance ( a form of dance) with the children.

Last but not least, we would like to share with you how we spent our 4th of July. We didn't attend any BBQs or even grill any hot dogs or hamburgers. Instead we ran our first ever 1/2 marathon, Media Maraton de Cali. Anita's goal was to complete the whole race running and my goal was to at least finish the race. I am very happy to say that we both completed our goals and rewarded ourselves by spending the rest of the day in bed. Happy 4th of July to us!