Sentencia!

Buckle up folks, this is going to be a bumpy one. so i have not written in a few days because 1) my mom visited for 4 days (thanks Vicky! you know what I mean!), and there has been no adoption related happenings to speak of, mainly tourist things and getting to know Bogota better. I gave a presentation at Universidad de Javeriana, and met with an animation class at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, courtesy of Ricardo Acre from ASIFA Colombia. I also met his brother Dan. These are truly awesome people all around, I cant say enough good things about them. in fact everyone from ASIFA (the International Animation Society) has been great, I want you all to visit! But now things are set to start moving at a break neck pace. But that term does not translate to Colombian Spanish. first, Rachel had to send a signed, authenticated, fingerprinted document to New York giving permission for Harry and I to enter the US without her. i NEED this paper before I can leave. she sent it Monday for Tuesday, they were going to notarize it and fedex it to me on Wednesday. but the goddamn NY Giants had a parade on wednesday and they couldn't get to the fedex office until late, so now it is supposed to be here on Friday. unbelievable. if I am here over the weekend because of the Giants, I fear how ugly things will get. We were scheduled to get our Sentencia on Tuesday. this is the OFFICIAL paper giving us parental rights to Harry. Our Lawyer, Carmen Helena, has been working hard to get us a sentencia date this fast (less than a week). The court defender needs to sign it, then the judge. She had to convince the judge that our fingerprints were coming soon (remember, the 5th time!) and the judge signed. Then the defender signed it and it was supposed to go  in front of another judge and me on Tuesday. we went to the office downtown, but the judge would not sign the paper because the defender was not there (even though she had already signed it days before). this would extend my stay 5 days! I freaked out like a feral cat. Everyone seemed to say "well, there is nothing we can do..." when I am scrambling with ideas of things we can do, shaking and yelling in this court room. I offered to drive to the defenders house. I offered to deliver the judge to her personally. I asked Carmen Helena to find someone else. Then she sprang in to action and ran up 8 flights of stairs in heels, checking room to room for a defender, and dragged one down to witness the signing. it was done. i got the decree and left immediately.
we had no time to go get Harry's birth certificate, this would have to wait until Wednesday. so we got up at 6am and drove 2 hours south to a very bad, poor, dirty part of town. This is the neighborhood where Harry was born. In Colombia, your birth records are kept in a Notary's office in the neighborhood of your birth. It looks like a movie set of old, thick books covered in the dust of ages, stacked in piles and towering over a hunchbacked old lady with a rubber finger tip, flipping through pages and mumbling as she shuffles down the aisled. Exactly like that. we were there to open it at 8am. It went relatively smoothly, which had me worried. from there we could get his passport, a new Birth certificate (his name is now Harry Larson Larson, they got confused by Rachel and I having the same last name and they didnt think to ask me. so that takes care of the Middle Name debate. who had that choice in the pool?), and the Embassy doctors appointment. I had heard from families staying here just this morning that we needed an i.d. for hm as well, so we got that, back on the North side of town. Then the lady at the passport office, also far North, said she would not process the passport because the form had the Mothers name on the father's line and vice versa. so we drove back down south, 2 hours, to the notary. We had the birth certificate re-done, but then her copier broke and she couldn't make copies. We waited 45 minutes. we had to be back at the passport office by 3 to get the passport processed in time. it was 1:50 when we finally left. we asked Julian, our driver, to get us back North fast. this is bad advice. he drove through traffic like he was being chased out of Hell. but he got us there. we were the last ones they let in that day. harry had his passport processed quickly. But then we realized it was the wrong kind, and we wouldn't get it back for 3 days. so she did it again (she was NOT happy about this). Passport, check. then off to the Doctor's office. he was great, very impressed with Harry and WE ARE DONE! All I have to do now is drop off paperwork at ICBF office and then apply for a Visa at the US Embassy. we pick it up 24 hours later and we get to leave on Friday night! (if the paper from Rachel arrives that is). Every single step is difficult, slow, painful and taxing. I have to pay attention to every detail because so many obstacles get in the way. some can be foreseen, some not at all. I can't rest for a second for fear it will delay things for days and days. this is not an exaggeration. If we get out of here on Friday I will finally let my shoulders relax. pics: Harry and Granny J, Dan and Ricardo Acre in Dan's studio, a shot of a street in Harry's 'birth' neighborhood, Harry and Kyle, a new friend who was staying with his family at the house we are renting, and a dog with a basket. He would go through the crowds collecting change for his owner who was doing tricks for cash. I think I gave 10 bucks to the dog, what a great angle!