Week 4

Hello all,

Today marks the begining of our 4th week here in Bogota. Athena is growing before our eyes. A few of her sleep-n-plays and onesies that fit her when we first got here, are getting too short on her now. Granted, the clothes dryer for us to use here at the hotel practicaly incinerates anything you put in it, so her clothes may be shrinking a bit:) We really think she has grown though! We made it through the weekend after the vaccinations and Athena's fever was gone by Sunday evening. Today we went out for lunch with Ann, Comillo and August. We went to a Brazilian restaurant and it was quite the experience. They have this system where they bring out 16 different types of grilled meat for you! Every few minutes they bring out the next one, big slabs of meat skewered on big sword-like grilling sticks. They take a huge knife and slice a piece off right onto your plate. We all tried all 16 of them and were ready to be rolled out when we were done. John's favorite was the lamb & beef tenderloin. My favorite was the buffalo and believe it or not, the chicken kindeys. We all agreed that the grilled cow udder was "udderly" disgusting.

Tomorrow will be a slow day as it is a Colombian holiday similar to our Labor Day in the US. I'm not sure if anything will be open or not. Wednesday we are going to an emerald dealer to learn about emeralds (a large export for Colombia) and if we can find something in our price range, hopefull buy a necklace or something to give Athena when she is older.

Love from Bogota,

Nic, John and Athena

A weekend in

Athena with her friend August.

Hello everyone,

We were instructed by the orphanage to have a doctor come to the hotel to do the second part of all of the vaccinations they started Athena on. The doctor came at 1:00 yesterday and Athena got 5 different vaccinations. We were told to stay in for the next 48 hours and moniter her for a rash and high fever and to "be prepared for a long night if she has these reactions". Athena is doing pretty good. She has a low fever, but continues to eat and sleep well. We're supposed to give her children's tylenol every six hours for the fever and even when we needed to wake her up during the night to give it to her, she fell back asleep pretty quickly:) She's being a trooper:)Right now, we're past the first 24 hours, so she should start to get even better from here.

Yesterday morning we went to visit the mothers home where the birth mothers live and recieve prenatal care while they are pregnant. We had a tour of the facility and got to meet some of the residents and their older children. The picture of Athena at the mothers home is with our coordinator Cecilia and two of the girls living at the home right now with their mothers.

John is very happy that today, one of the days that we need to be cooped up in our room, is the day that the NFL draft is on:) The draft, combined with entertaining Athena and reading books when she's napping is going to be the extent of our weekend.


We'll talk with everyone again soon!

Love,

Nic, John & Athena

Salt Cathedral

Hi everyone,

This morning we went on a little outing to the Salt Cathdral just outside of Bogota. The cathedral was build to honor the hard working salt minors because salt is a very important part of the economy is Colombia. It is a catholic cathedral carved deep into a salt mine. It was really beautiful on the inside. The mountain is made of salt, carbon and pirite (fools gold). The walls sparkled all around & they had the statues and other sights of interst illuminated with blue lights. The tour was about an hour long & Athena had mixed feelings about it. She started out doing fine in her snuggly, hanging out and looking at things. About halfway through, she had had enough of the darkness and let us know it. Of course the moment she decided to let loose with her objections was perfect. Right as the guide took us up to the choir loft and explained to us that the walls around the loft were carved just right so that the sound from the loft would carry and resinate throughout the entire cathedral & corradors is when she started to loudly cry her head off. Classic:) We were one of "those" families ruining other peoples good time with our screaming infant! There was also a huge power outage while we were down in the mine. Luckily, they have a backup generator or that could have been interesting. Apparently the outage was throughout the entire country of Colombia!

Here is a picture of Athena with her best friend cinco-puss and a few photos from the cathedral. The pictures from the cathedral aren't nearly as pretty as the real thing, but you can get an idea of what it was like:)

Love to everyone!

Nic, John & Athena

Ayudame

He's not screaming... he's yawning, really:)
Playroom for children.

Babies awaiting the arrival of their families.



Athena and one of her caretakers.

Athena's 1st crib.

This is the infant room, Athena was here for about 2 weeks.

Today we went back for a tour of Ayudame, the orphanage that Athena lived at for the first three months of her life. Ayudame translated means "help me". All of the workers were so excited to see her. It was clear to us that the care givers really do care about the children there. Everyone wanted to hold her again and they all commented on how much she's grown since she's been with us. We have pictures of her with her caretakers, nurse and the assistant director of the orphanage. We got to see the infant room, baby rooms, toddler rooms and the dorm style rooms for the older children. Ayudame is actually almost empty at the moment. There are only 2 infants, 5 babies and one school age child at the facility at this time. They have room to accomodate 40 babies and many older children. They are expecting a group of 20 school age children next week to be transfered from a state orphanage. They have a small gift shop in the orphanage that sells hand made items as a fund raiser for Ayudame. All of the items are made by the birth mothers while they are staying in the mothers' home. We bought a hand knit scarf to give to Athena when she gets older. One of the highlights of the visit came after the tour. We were talking with the orphanage assistant director and asked her if there was anything she could tell us about Athena's first three months that we could put in her baby book. She couldn't think of anything, but she did go and get Athena's file to look through one last time for us and she found Athena's baby footprints from the hospital & gave them to us! We are so happy to have them & gain a small piece of the three months that we were not with her.

Love to all!

Nic, John & Athena

A sunny day:)

"I waited until dad was asleep to play dress-up with his clothes!"




Athena really loves her new teething toy:)

Hello everyone,

It was great to see the sun today for a few hours after several days of dreary drizzles. We even ventured out for 2 walks today to take advantage of the sunshine! We had a day of hanging out at the hotel today and it was one of our best parenting days yet. It seemed like we knew what we were doing! Bath, bottles and naps all went perfectly today:) The next few days are scheduled full though, so we'll see how those go. Tomorrow we have a tour of Ayudame, the orphanage that Athena lived at for the first 3 months of her life. Thursday we're going on a tour of a salt cathedral. It sounds a bit odd to me, a SALT cathedral? Everyone we talk to though, even locals, say it's one of the things you can't miss seeing in Bogota, so we're going to give it a wirl:) Friday we have a tour of the mothers home where the birth mothers live while they are pregnant and after they have the babies. Friday afternoon we have a doctor coming for a house call to catch Athena up on her vaccinations.

Hugs to everyone!

Nic, John & Athena

To Market, To Market..

Hello everyone,

We're spending an afternoon in our room relaxing and napping after a little excersion to one of the markets this morning. The one we went to was about a 20 minute walk away & it is held in the large courtyard of another hotel. It wasn't as big as we thought it was going to be, but of course we found a few cute things we couldn't pass up. We bought a photo album and a hand carved wooden parchisi board. When we saw the parchisi board, we both agreed we couldn't pass it up. In the afternoons when Athena is napping, John and I have passed quite a bit of the time playing parchisi on the board they have here at the hotel. The one we bought is super cute and they personalized it with "Zuge" for us. There is another, bigger market that is a little further away that we may venture out to next Sunday for something to do if the weather is nice.

Athena has a taken a special liking to one of her toys already. Her favorite so far seems to be an animal that goes along with her floor gym. We think it is a type of octopus. It looks like a zucchini with 5 legs coming off of it like an octopus & it has huge eyes. Since it only has 5 legs, but looks like an octopus we have named is cinco-puss.

That's all for now around here:)

Love from Bogota!

Nic, John & Athena

Historic Bogota

Hello from Colombia,

Today we took some time to explore the old downtown of Bogota. We had a wonderful tour guide, Hernando. He is the son of our adoption coordinator and is an anthropology student at one of the universities in Bogota. We started our excursion by visiting the Museo del Oro, or the Gold Museum. This museum highlights the cultural history of Colombia pre-european contact. The majority of artifacts on display are, you guessed it, gold. Hernando did an excellent job of explaining the significance of the different items and also gave us a unique insite into the history of the different native tribes that were living in the different regions of Colombia.

After the museum Hernando took us on a walking tour of the colonial center of Bogota. This is where the Spanish conquistadors set up the original city of Bogota. Many of the buildings in this area date back to the 1820's and older. It is a very beautiful area with colorful Spanish colonial buildings, stone roads and a mountain backdrop behind it all. Also located in this section of Bogota were all the government buildings, including the presidents home.

While exploring Bogota we happened upon an organic cafe that served traditional Colombian foods. We also had the opportunity to give Athena her 1st bottle lunch outside of the hotel. We weren't sure how it was going to go over, but she did great and finished the entire bottle in record time. Our lunch was awesome. We had big steaming bowls of absolutely delicious home made soups called Ajiaco & Sancocho De Gallina along with corn flat breads and pico de gallo with avacados. It was so good! It was also very affordable. The thee of us had more than we could possibly eat for about $12 dollars U.S. Processed food is very expensive however. The other day at the grocery store we paid about $4 for a can of Pringles. The home made food of course, was much better than the Pringles:)
Love from Bogota
The Zuges

And you think YOU have bedhead in the morning!

Hello everyone,

It was a slow day for the Zuge's today in Bogota. It's a cold, rainy day, right around 5o degrees out, but we still had to sneak out for a coffee date with some other American couples from another hotel. (yes, grandma Janet, we bundled Athena up really good and put a stocking cap on her & the coffee shop was right around the corner!) This coffee shop is amazing! It's owned and run by a man who is a native of France and it's called Jacques. There are about 20 different coffee drinks to choose from and tons of pastries and desserts that are just over the moon! John and I just had coffee this time because we had just eaten, but we got to sample some of the other's desserts and we will for sure be going back. Athena did really well. She lasted for about and hour and a half before she got restless and we had to get going. Not bad for a 4 month old in a fancy french coffee shop! Tomorrow we are going to a gold museum. We'll tell you all about it tomorrow. John is very excited to go, being the history buff that he is:) We're going with the son of our adoption coordinator who is about our age. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get a chance to see the sun again. Take care everyone!

Love from Bogota,

Nic, John & Athena

Family trip numero uno:)

Hello everyone,

We went on our first little family trip this morning. The hotel organized a trip to an historic church here in Bogota called Monserrate. In addition to being a very important church in the city, it is also a tourist attraction because it is high in the mountains above the city and it has a beautiful view. The church was originaly built by Spanish missionaries and a new church was built in the 1920's to accomidate more people. We had a guided tour of the grounds and church. John, of course being the history lover that he is was very interested:) Nicole and Athena looked for pretty pictures to take along the way and enjoyed the nice view:) One of the unique parts of this trip was the cable car trip up and down the mountain to get to the church. There was more military personel at the church than we could possibly count. Men all over in their uniforms with weapons in hand. They told us the reason for the extra security around Bogota is that the president of Chile is visiting Bogota. We returned from our trip just in time to beat an afternoon thunderstorm.

Athena is starting to do more and more baby talk with us. Her current favorite thing to say is Ah-boo, Ah-boo! We think she especially likes to say this because she can pucker her lips and blow a little bit of spit and she thinks this is quite fun!

Take care!

Love,

Nic, John & Athena

An important day:)

Hello everyone! Today was an important day in our adoption process. We had our court interview with a person called the Defender Of Minors. This is the person who approves our case and submits it to the courts to go through the process. You need to have the baby with you for one week to make sure everything is going O.K. before they will do this interview & get the ball rolling. So as of today, Athena has been with mommy and daddy Zuge for one week! The meeting went well and our paperwork is officially in the courts as of this morning. In the meeting they asked questions like "Why did you choose Colombia to adopt from?" and "Would you like to adopt from Colombia again?" They also asked us how much information the orphanage had given us about Athena and her birth family and then went through her file to see if there was anything else that they could tell us. After today, we do not need to be present at any more meetings or interviews for the court process. It will all be done by our lawyer.

When our case is done moving through the courts and the last judge signs off on it, we will have what is called "sentencia". After sentencia we will have few more days of paperwork to get Athena's passport and official name change and things like that and then we will be able to come back to Wisconsin:) There are so many different courts and judges that any given case could possibly be assigned to, that they cannot predict how long sentencia will take. It will most likely be a few weeks. Until then, we are free to do any sightseeing we would like and be tourists in this beautiful country:) Tomorrow we are going to a place in the mountains called Monserrate. We will tell you all about it and have pictures in our next update!

Here are some pictures from this morning with the whole family dressed up for our big interview:)

Our 2nd Monday in Bogota

Time sure flies when you have a new baby to take care of. It hardly seems like we have been gone a week already. Today was a cold and rainy day in Bogota. This morning we had to go to Colombia's version of a notary. It was a little strange because we had to leave Athena with a babysitter at the hotel (babies are not allowed in the notaries office). The staff member who watched her said she did great while we were gone. After we got back to the hotel we had some lunch while Athena slept. Later on in the afternoon we went to the other Zuetana location for a fiesta with a band that played traditional Colombian music. Tommorrow should be a fairly laid back day, but Wednesday and Thursday are jammed packed with things to do.

Love,

The Zuges

Things we've done and learned

Hola,

Its been an exciting couple of days in Bogota. On Thursday night the wonderful staff at Zuetana had a welcome fiesta for Athena, it was a lot of fun. Athena got to try frosting and she loved it. Besides the party we have been very busy learning each other's routines. Athena goes to bed at about 9:30 everynight after a bottle and a fresh diaper. She normally sleeps until about 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning! After breakfast she takes a nap (usually with Dad while Mom showers) and then has another breakfast bottle. Then its time for a bath, she hasn't decided whether she likes the bath or not. In the late mornings and afternoons we go for walks around Bogota. Today we are going to take or first family trip to the park. Here are some new pictures to look at.

Love to all,

John, Nicole and Athena

A busy day in Bogota

What a fun and busy day in Bogota. We started the day by taking a nap after breakfast. After our little snooze we went on our 1st family walk around the neighborhood with the activity coordinator Carmen. When we got back Carmen invited us to a fruit tasting of native Colombian fruits. We were joined by Mateo another guest here at the hotel. During the tasting we brought out chocolate covered cranbarries from Wisconsin for everyone to try, they loved them. After lunch Athena met a playmate when we had coffee with our new friends Peter, Nicole and their beutiful baby boy Anthony. Well, its time for a bottle and a fresh diaper so we better get going.

Love,

John, Nicole and Athena

Say hello to little Athena

Hello to all our friends and family. The 3 of us are back to our hotel room for the 1st time together. The presentation went very well. Athena was a little cranky at first because they woke her up from a nap for the presentaion, but once we got a bottle in her she cheered right up. After she was fed and burped, she was all smiles:) Athena really liked her 1st ride in a car, she loves looking out the window at all the people in Bogota.

Everyone who has seen her so far is amazed at her head of hair:) The orphanage director even told us that they trimmed her hair this morning! The hotel is great. As soon as we got back they helped us to order her formula to be delivered from a nearby store and showed us how to heat water for her bottles and the procedure for having them sterilize the bottles here for us.

Here are some of our first family pictures. I'm sure the next few days will be an adventure until we all figure each other out!

Enjoy:)

Love,

Nic, John and Athena