Social Worker Meeting
We had our first meeting/interview with our social worker on 1/2/09. It went alright. It wasn’t necessarily what I was expecting but maybe it should have been. It felt more like a job interview and less like an informal get to know you meeting which I guess is what I was expecting. She had pages of questions that were all slightly different than anything we had been asked before. The way many of them were worded I wasn’t really certain what type of answer they were looking for.
Questions like:
What type of financial resources do you have to support a child?
We have our income and debt all listed out on forms and in our essays we already submitted, what more info were they looking for? ”Financial Resources…” we do alright but it’s not like we have multi-million dollar stock portfolios to discuss with anyone. This question made me feel like we were suppose to.
How have you emmersed yourself in the ethnic and cultural society of the child you intend to adopt?
We have only been on the Colombian adoption path for just over two months, and it was over the holidays. In that time I have done a lot of on-line research and joined a Colombian recipe of the Month club. I may take some Colombian Cooking classes, which I am very excited about. They wanted to know who we have as friends that are Colombian and unfortunately, I don’t know anyone that is Colombian. 
I’m working on changing that as I know how important it will be to our child to have Latin and specificially Colombian adults in their lives and everything I am learning about Colombia I am really enjoying!
My cousin’s daughter is part Latin and we are excited about our children growing up together. Also we have a niece and nephew that are part Latin.
We are still three years out from bringing our child home, so I guess I wasn’t prepared to provide names of people at this interview. I think it will be a lot easier to have more Colombian/Latin friends once we learn Spanish.
We are planning on starting either Spanish Classes or to re-buy the Rosetta Stone soon. I want to be fluent in Spanish by the time we travel. In high school I had 4 years worth of French classes and don’t feel I was ever fluent in it, and Jason had many years of Latin in school. So both love learning languages we are both excited to learn Spanish.
I feel if we expect our child to learn English, the least we can do is learn Spanish first. This will help our child learn the language, help our child keep their birth language, and help our travel in Colombia.
New Homework Completed
Our social worker gave us homework to explore the Latin American shops in Minneapolis. (Which is right by my work) We have been through several shops like this before but always enjoy trying something new. We did this on Sunday 1/4/09.
Beyond just the basic Latin American Grocery store there was an entire Bazaar hidden there that I never knew existed. There were tons of shops that had everything from clothing, cooking utensils, tons of DVD movies (not quite sure how you get a copy of Will Smith’s new movie on DVD 2 days after it was released in the movie theaters – but it was EVERYWHERE for $3). No, we didn’t buy it.
There was great music playing through all the shops which to us seemed excessively loud but kept everyone in a lively mood. There were several food shops in the center cafe area with everything listed in Spanish, of course. Unfortunately we don’t speak Spanish and the music was just so loud we couldn’t really ask questions to anyone about what the food actually was. Since I have a shellfish allergy – even though I don’t believe there was any shellfish we just looked at everything and didn’t purchase any restaurant food.
We did buy some Milk Candy and some Wheat pasta (think it was Tomato flavor). The Milk candy was great and the pasta was okay but the texiture was way different then the pasta we are used to. We purchased several small items.
We did get a few odd looks as people must have been wondering why we were there when we couldn’t speak Spanish. 90% of everyone was so nice and did our best to answer questions we had about merchandise and different foods when we asked.
Maybe this summer I will walk down there once a week or so and see what’s new. It’s just that close to my work. 
I had no idea there was so much to see. It will be a great place to practice my Spanish once I am up and rolling!
Colombian Program Changes
The Colombian program continues to change. In October 2008 we spoke with the country specialist and were advised we could get a child under three years old probably an infant through this program.
This has changed in the last couple months. Now they are only accepting applications for children three and up. It is amazing how quickly everything changes. As of today we will be requesting a boy or girl between 3-4 years old or siblings in a similar age range. The idea of siblings is very unlikely at this point as from our meeting it appears that most sibling groups are over seven years of age.
The wait time is still about 30 months once we are approved. We should be completed with our home study and have our approval in less than six months.
