WE HAVE HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!

Hola,

We got the call from Racquel... she has Belicia's birth certificate!!! We will speak with Gloria tomorrow to find out what time she will pick us up on Tuesday. Jim and I both agree... as early as possible. Hey, did any of you see on FOX News what happened in Bogota yesterday? They had a major hail storm; when I saw the video footage on FOX, my mouth literally dropped open. Jim went down to the gym and picked up the newspaper so we can bring home some pictures of it. Again, we thank the Lord that we were here this weekend... hummmm... 80 some degrees and sun vs. hail storm (bbbrrrrrrrrr cold!!)... man, that's a tough call; which would you choose?

We've had a nice and relaxing day today. Since Gloria is still gone, we got a taxi from the hotel and went over to the Oviedo Mall again. This mall is unbelievably huge (3-4 levels) and much of it is open air. When we left the hotel, the sky was blue. While we were there, it began to pour. It's very strange to walk along store fronts and it's pouring in the center between you and the other side of the stores. We found a nice shop with tons of hair accessories... very inexpensive, so the girls and I bought a few pieces. They had a nice bookstore; it offered very few bi-lingual books for children, but we found a gem. It tells a story along with pictures and sounds. It will really help her with English sentence structure and her prepositions. For example, if in the paragraph a sentence says, "The frog is sitting behind the dog.", it will have a picture on the bottom of the page showing that. The page beside it will have it in Spanish along with sound bites in Spanish and English for the nouns, frog and dog. It's a tremendous book and she loves it.

We're finding Belicia is allergic to other medicines also. She's been getting a lot of hives the last couple of days. Bethany has a new friend that is 11 years old and is from Germany. They have just adopted a little five year old boy. Both of the parents are doctors and while I was talking with the mother this morning by the pool, Belicia had a horrible nose bleed. Belicia had four more after that, so the mother gave us some homeopathic medicine for treatment. She treats children for allergies and skin conditions and said that this is nothing to be alarmed about; it's not uncommon. I'm not sure, but we are definitely carrying tissues everywhere we go.

We did have a fabulous dinner last night with Daniel and the two dads. Daniel told us something that just blew my mind and I had to ask him again to repeat himself because I thought surely I misunderstood him. He said that here in Medellin alone, there are approximately 30,000 (yes, thirty thousand) children mostly between the ages of 5-15 on the streets. I asked him if most of them had parents with them and he said, "No, most of them are alone or with gangs." Like I had mentioned yesterday, he works on the streets with these children and he told us some of the most heartbreaking stories. Oh... you wish you could somehow help them all...

Oh, by the way, now that you've turned your clocks back, we're on the same time as all of you on the East Coast.

Buenas noches,
Kathy