TRAVEL DATES

We were told that on January 24th, the person who would issue our travel dates would be back in the office. I stalked my email all day waiting to find out when we'd be heading to Colombia. It was quite late in the day and we still hadn't heard so I had assumed we'd need to continue to wait. BUT...as Aria and I left the physical therapist's office in Toronto and were walking through the parking lot my WhatsApp started to blow up with message after message. We had been assigned travel dates!! We would fly to Bogota on February 14th, have a zoom call with ICBF (Colombian Social Services) February 15th and get Sam on February 16th!! EEK! We had a ton of work ahead - flights, hotels, apply for visas, pack, oh my!

Our first step was to book flights. With me in Toronto and Shane in Las Vegas, the 3 hour time change caused some issues but late that night, we had flights booked! I spent the next day scrambling to collect all the documents we'd need to apply for our Colombian Visas. I was in Toronto after all. But with lots of help, we managed to get everything we needed to get the visa application submitted. We had previously had to travel to the Colombian Consulate in Chicago to the get visas, but we were told we could just apply online. Fingers crossed we get them with no issues!

Next we had to decide where we'd be staying. This trip, unlike our others, would require quite a bit of travel within Colombia. And how long we'd be at each destination was just an educated guess. When we started the process to adopt Sam, he was in the care of an orphanage in Bogota called La Casa. Shortly after we had sent our LOI, he was transferred into ICBF care. We didn't realize until recently that he was back in Tunja, the city he had been born in located approximately 2 hours north east of Bogota.

Our plans are slowing coming together. We are to flying into Bogota February 14th. We will stay overnight at the Courtyard near the airport. On February 15th, we will pickup my mom who is taking the red-eye flight from Houston. We will then have our zoom call with ICBF sometime the 15th, and leave for Villa de Leyva (a small tourist town near Tunja) later that day. 

We will meet Sam on February 16th and spend the next week together in a beautiful Airbnb in Villa de Leyva. We will then meet with ICBF on February 21st and hopefully get their approval to move forward with the adoption. Once they sign off, we will head back to Bogota for Sam's TB test and onto La Mesa, another small town a couple hours outside of Bogota where we will stay for a couple weeks until our case can be heard by the judge. Once the judge finalizes the adoption, we will be back to Bogota to finish out the rest of the process. We are hopeful that come March 16th, we will be finished up and coming home.

Now time to get packing!! We'll finally be on our way soon to meet our sweet little boy.