Our first trip to Guatemala

9/24/06
John and I are exhausted from our whirlwind trip to Guatemala this weekend, but we had a wonderful time. We received word about two weeks ago that if we were willing to travel to Guatemala to sign our Power of Attorney paperwork it could bring our son home four weeks sooner. Power Of Attorney or (POA) is the paperwork that must be signed to authorize the attorneys in Guatemala to work on our behalf. Typically the paperwork is sent to the US in Spanish and must be translated to English, then signed by us, notarized, state certified, authenticated by the Embassy, and then translated back into Spanish. As you can probably imagine this process takes a ridiculous amount of time so we chose to travel to sign it, thereby skipping ALL of the steps (yay). We left on 9/22, just the two of us. Sarah stayed at home with my sister Kelly (thank you so much Kelly) and they had a blast. The trip down was fine, only five and a half hours and we were able to get to the Marriot hotel there with no trouble at all. We met our attorney, Miriam that afternoon and she was WONDERFUL! We were both so impressed with how up front and sweet she was. But she was not happy when we told her that we were planning on spending the next day just sitting around the hotel and hooked us up with one of her paralegals, Karla. Karla met us the next morning in the lobby and we hopped in her car and headed out to Antigua (no not the island). What a wonderful woman, we are so blessed to meet such people! She really took care of us on Saturday, showing us all of the landmarks, securing us a safe meal to eat and most importantly helping me shop (as she translated and bartered for me). We really had a wonderful time with her and without that experience would not have seen anything beyond the hotel gates.

Guatemala is a beautiful country and the people are amazingly kind, but it is completely impovished and my heart broke as I watched small children living amoung farm animals. John and I truly feel thankful for everyperson and thing that we have been blessed with, we are very fortunate. The hotel was great and full of American families seeking out their new family member. The lobby was like a superhighway for strollers and I must have smiled a thousand times just looking at the babies. They looked so happy and content.

Sunday was spent primarily in airports or on a plane playing Scrabble or watching 24 on our DVD player. We got in late and are exhausted, but renewed at the same time. It made us want to bring Joey home even more than we did before: and I did not think that was possible.