my great Colombian adventure

[Jim]

On July 26 Nidia and I flew to Cali and then Bogota to meet family and to do the embassy K-1 visa dance. Here are the highlights.

#1 La Copa America happened while we were there. On Thursday, checking into our hotel, a roar errupted that seems to come from everywhere in the neighborhood. Colombia has just taken a 1-0 lead over Hondurus.

Sunday, I watched the only football / soccar game I have watched from start to finish. Colombia dominated, won 1-0 and the streets erupted. Flags everywhere, faces painted yellow, blue and red...general pandemonium and jubilation. In six games Colombia allowed ZERO goals and scored 11. Colombians had a reason to feel good about themselves and it was a sight to see.

#2 Thursday night after we checked in Nidia's whole family came over. I was really apprehensive about my new step children not knowing what to expect. They kids were great and we got along well. The six year old boy was excited that he could understand me since the phone had been difficult for us. The sixteen year old girl was really excited about the challenges she faces here (In high school ESL students enter with zero credits, no matter where they come from.

#3 At the airport, Nidia had her wallet stolen. It was eary to cancel our joint credit cards but the big deal was La Cedula, the national ID card. She couldn't leave the country without it. She went off to solve this problem and I spent the day with Nidia's sister Zulma at Chipechape and downtown. That night we had a grand feast with my new family. Their sincerity and caring was truly amazing.

#4 It takes two weeks to get a temporary Cedula so this totally screwed up our plans. We had reservations to fly to Bogota Sunday night but without a Cedula this was a waste of time.

Nidia had worked at La Alcaldia and called a friend. On Monday Morning, we met him in his office. He walked us past hundreds of people waiting for an appointment time to get their temporary Cedula to the front of the line. After we got the paperwork done ("Now wait two weeks for us to mail it to you"), we walked the stuff up to his office, he signed it and we were ready to go to Bogota.

#5 Ana Cecilia and I were the only ones who cried as the taxi to the airport pulled away. She had five friends come over to say good-bye, Luis Miguel had spent the day with his best friend and there were Nidia's two sisters and her mother.

#6 Two Avianca stories--He bags were ransacked when she returned in April and Aviance lied to get out of paying for her loss. On Sunday, I had called Avianca to change the tickets to Monday night (hoping that we'd get lucky with the Cedula) and they had a $200 penelty ($50 x 4) for the 9:30 PM flight. We showed up at the airport at 5PM hoping to take the 6PM flight. Nidia told me to shut up and she did the talking. We paid ZERO for the change.

#7 In Bogota we stayed with her brother, an attorney for the city. We had not received Nidia's K-1 papers so after dealing with Colombian burocracy fairly successfully, now we had o deal with the US.

We showed up at 8AM but had to come back at 1PM and they gave us the papers allowing us to get lab tests, shots and a dcotor's exam necessary to get the visa. That same day the papers arrived in Cali and were air expressed to us. Since the embassy had given us non persoanlized papers, this might had been a major problem had not the real papers been sent down to us.

#8 We ran around Bogota for two days, jumped through hoops and had all our ducks in order by 7AM on Thursday. I was irrelevant to the process. We had been expected to be invited back at 3PM Thursday for a decision but the invite was for Friday at 3PM. I left Friday morning.

Nidia was told that she needed to wait a week for them to get a report back on her criminal activity while in the US. Her being her ten weeks on a tourist visa had complicaed the process further.

CONCLUSION--One detail that became obvious to me is that Nidia may want to spend every vacation in Colombia visiting her family. I enjoy them and since communicating in french and Spanish is a hobby of mine, I will enjoy this.

For those of you just learning enough Spanish to communicate, please expect the following. Your future wife will probably want to go back again and again and unless you get very good in Spanish, you might not enjoy your vacations.

Nidia returns to La Embajada on Friday 8-10 when they tell he she has not committed any US crimes and give her her visa or wirte another chapter to our story.

Peace,

Jim

Best of Luck Jim. Whats your email?

Glad to see you found time to squeeeze in a little "general pandemonium & jubilation" on the trip. Don't let the bureaucrats wear ya' down.

Jeff

[Jim]

Ray,

My E-mail is:

nanookaz@mindspring.com


Jim

Jim,

I tried your above email and did not work.

Are you sure this is your email?

[Jim]

Ray,

Yea, that's my correct E-mail. Try it again and if it doesn't work post yours here. I'll drop you a line and you can "reply".

Jim

Hi Jim,
Very good to hear that most things are going well for you. Sorry to hear about the minor mishaps especially the wallet thing. Seems like the unexpected things can be a real pain sometimes.
Buena Suerta con tu familia nueva,
Fred

[HonkyTonk]

Jim, I know it's yesterdays news but congratulations. Just got back from the kidnapping capital myself. Forget Avianca. Lots of problems. Rare with Aces in my travels. Hang in there!!!!!