May 3rd:)

Hello everyone,

There isn't a whole lot of excitement around here, but we did do a few fun things this week to tell about. On Wednesday we went to learn about emeralds at a beautiful emerald dealers' store. It was an interesting experience. Freddy, the store owner, sent his driver to pick us up for our tour and shopping. When we arrived we needed to be buzzed in through a set of locked doors. When those doors were locked behind us, then we were buzzed in through the second set of locked doors. The inside looked like any other really nice jewelry store that you would go to in the U.S. Once inside, we met Freddy. He is a very nice man who speaks very good english and he taught us all about emeralds. We learned how to tell the quality of emeralds and how they are graded. He showed us tons of examples in each category ranging from a very poor quality 2 karat emerald for $200 to a 1 karat beautiful, nearly flawless emerald for $22,000! Apparently, 70% of the emeralds mined in the world come from Colombia and they are all mined within a small 60 square mile radius. We went thinking maybe we would by a pendant for Athena so we could have something extra special from Colombia to give to her when she is older. Of course we're already pushovers for our baby girl and we ended up buying her an absolutely beautiful solitaire pendant!

The hotel has an activity coordinator Carmen, who sets up activities or outings for the guests every few days. Yesterday was mini spa day and I got a french manicure:) John came walking by while I was getting it and commented "Gee, it's soooo rough being a new mom. I barely have time to get in my manicure during nap time!"

Today was probably John's favorite day because we took a little break from the hotel food and went out for burgers to a place called El Corral Gourmet. He's been looking forward to going to this place for quite some time. The hotel food is good, but we haven't had burgers since we've been here and we're both big burger fans:) It was really good, John had a 1/2 lb. triple cheesburger with nachos!-such a Wisconsin boy! It was kind of cold to go out walking to the restaurant, but we bundled Athena up and put her in her snuggly and the I put my rain coat on over the snuggly, so she was plenty warm. Like a baby kangaroo:)

One of the German families here who are just a few days ahead of us in the process and are in the same court as us recieved their sentencia today! We're hoping we're next:)

Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us:)

Love,

Nic, John and Athena