We meet her tomorrow!

Today has been a good day.  We met with our facilitator early in the day, we discussed some of the upcoming adoption process and what to expect.  After our meeting, he took us to the mall to purchase a cell phone to be used in country.  Then, he drove us around Bogota to see the city.  It is absolutely amazing.  I am in love with Colombia.  I am hoping to get some excellent pictures on this trip!  After our mini tour, we were taken to the airport to catch our flight to Pasto.

The flight to Pasto was beautiful.  When leaving the ground in Bogota, we were able to see just how big the city is.  The landscape on the way to Pasto is incredible, so many mountains.  When we landed, it was at a very small airport surrounded by huge mountains. 

We had a taxi at the airport waiting to take us to our hotel.  The ride in the taxi was breathtaking... for many reasons.  First of all, you should understand that I have NOT been in many taxi's in my life.  I know they drive crazy, but that does not begin to describe this drive.  The roads are narrow, mountainous and winding, yet the drivers here all pass big trucks in no passing zones and speed like crazy!  It was unnerving to say the least.  The drive took about 30 minutes or so.  We saw some incredible things from the beautiful mountains and valleys to the run down shanty's that some locals call home.  There were cows tethered to the sides of the road and dogs roaming everywhere.  I wish I was able to get some pictures, hopefully I can get some good pictures on our trip here.

Once we made it (safely) to our hotel, we were greeted by the owner, who will also be our interpreter while we are in Pasto. Patrice is a very nice man and has helped several adoptive families over the last several years. We were shown to our room and settled in.  After getting settled in, we walked around the area to get a feel for it.  We found a couple of nice parks we can take Claudia to. There is also a serene river, we are told that would be a nice place to go.  After our walk, we relaxed before dinner at the hotel.  For dinner we had pork with mushrooms, a zucchini bake, rice and banana custard for dessert.  I had lulo juice with my dinner.  The juice comes from the lulo fruit and was good but bitter, unlike any juice I have ever had before.  You are given sugar to add to the juice (which is made fresh at the hotel).  Dinner was excellent and we met a couple that spoke English.  It was nice to have someone we could converse with and we found out that they are missionaries and had spent the last 15 years or so as missionaries in Venezuela and are now missionaries in Pasto.  We had some great conversations!

Tomorrow we meet Claudia.  Words cannot express how we feel right now, so I will leave you with Claudia's visa picture which was given to us today:

I want to know how they can get the kids not to smile for visa pictures!  Tomorrow, I get to kiss those cute cheeks!!!