We have 2 Pizza Chefs!! August 23, 2008

Today, we decided to venture out into Bogota. Since it is Saturday, the streets are not as busy with traffic. I have never seen anything like the traffic here in Bogota. We tried to take photos, but they just don't do it justice. Let's just say that when you cross the street, you are putting you life in your own hands. Another interesting feature, is that in the middle of the 2 lanes going each way, there is a bicycle path, and there are people on bicycles pulling advertising signs.

We have no idea what it says, but we found it very unique.

We met a family from North Carolina, about a week ago, and they are staying about 3 blocks away in another Zuetana hotel. We decided to stop by and say hello. They have adopted a 7 year old girl, and are the only other family that we have met from the United States. We had a great chat with them.

We then headed over to a Pizza place called Archie's Gourmet Pizza. We had heard about this place from another family who had previously travelled to Bogota for adoption. It was a great place, and we all had fun here. They have a small room for children to make their own pizza. They start by having the children wash their hands, and then they put a chef hat, and apron on them. Then they begin to have the children make their own pizza. After adding flour to their hands and the table, they are given a small ball of dough, and then they direct the children to flatten it out, and pound it, and then make it round. Next, each child gets a small cup of pizza sauce, followed by cheese, ham and pineapple to top the pizza with. Then they take the pizza's to be baked, and when they are baked, each child gets his pizza back to eat. I think Eric and Joyce had as much fun watching as the children did making the pizza's. Jeferson and Diego had huge smiles on their faces the whole time they were making the pizza. Since we couldn't choose which photos were the cutest, we thought we would include them all. (Yes, we are very proud parents!!!)

After a fun afternoon, we walked back to Zuetana. The boys played a little before dinner, and then after dinner it was time for bed. We listened to a few kids songs and colored. Eric is sooo amazed at how many kids songs Joyce knows the words to. When Eric was surprised that there were only 8 songs on each of the CD's, Joyce reminded him that technology has advanced, because when she was a child, she had all the songs on "45 records" and each side had only 1 song, so having 8 songs before having to change the CD is advancement.

Another very busy day, but the boys were very well behaved on our venture.

There appears to be some type of employee issues here at this hotel. When we went down for dinner tonight, we discovered that there was only 1 staff member here, and that was the maid/server. She doesn't speak any English, but from what we understood, she was handling the front desk and also serving dinner. This is very unusual, so we tend to think that there is something going on. We were told that one of the desk hosts will be leaving Zuetana next week.

Around 9PM a desk hostess did arrive, but doesn't speak English, so we are not sure what happened to the regular staff member.

Another family arrived tonight as well. They are from the country of Norway. The dad was originally adopted from Colombia many many years ago, and he and his wife have now returned to adopt a second child from Colombia. Surprisingly they speak only Norwegian and English, and no Spanish. Since all of the other families here are from the Scandinavian Countries, they tend to communicate with each other in the Danish/Norwegian language.

We want to Thank everyone for their emails and comments. It brings us closer to home.

Another exhausting day for Mami and Papi.

Adios from Eric, Joyce, Jeferson and Diego.