Monday Morning Breakfast
We met up with our facilitator, Karla, on Sunday morning and went to breakfast with her at the place down the block and around the corner. It was kind of a big deal, because we don't legally have custody of Maria.
Vilma, the foster mother, has custody, and she carries around a sheath of papers all notarized, stamped signed and fingerprinted that shows this, in case she's stopped and hassled by the police or other authorities.
She'd given us these papers last time we visited, and I had made copies, but my copies of course don't have the stamps, etc. And they list her name and not ours. And there are adoption horror stories of the "wrong" people looking after children (neighbors, friends, etc.), getting stopped, not having the right papers, and the children being picked up and put in the care of the state.
Still, Karla thought the odds of any of this happening, on a Sunday morning, 1 block from the hotel (the Swiss Embassy was between the restaurant and the hotel), with her around, were very low, so off we went.
Which was fun, but we did get some stares. Not everyone in Guatemala is OK with Americans adopting their children (in 2006 something like 1% of the birthrate was adopted by foreigners). And parents taking small children to restaurants is a very American thing, but not a very Guatemalan thing. And watching men (that would be me) taking care of little girls is, again, not so much in the culture of Latin America.
But the staff there was very nice and so we went again on Monday, this time with out Karla.
Tuesday morning we're actually heading for a hearing in front of the Judge, so no breakfast outside the hotel.
We met up with our facilitator, Karla, on Sunday morning and went to breakfast with her at the place down the block and around the corner. It was kind of a big deal, because we don't legally have custody of Maria.
Vilma, the foster mother, has custody, and she carries around a sheath of papers all notarized, stamped signed and fingerprinted that shows this, in case she's stopped and hassled by the police or other authorities.
She'd given us these papers last time we visited, and I had made copies, but my copies of course don't have the stamps, etc. And they list her name and not ours. And there are adoption horror stories of the "wrong" people looking after children (neighbors, friends, etc.), getting stopped, not having the right papers, and the children being picked up and put in the care of the state.
Still, Karla thought the odds of any of this happening, on a Sunday morning, 1 block from the hotel (the Swiss Embassy was between the restaurant and the hotel), with her around, were very low, so off we went.
Which was fun, but we did get some stares. Not everyone in Guatemala is OK with Americans adopting their children (in 2006 something like 1% of the birthrate was adopted by foreigners). And parents taking small children to restaurants is a very American thing, but not a very Guatemalan thing. And watching men (that would be me) taking care of little girls is, again, not so much in the culture of Latin America.
But the staff there was very nice and so we went again on Monday, this time with out Karla.
Tuesday morning we're actually heading for a hearing in front of the Judge, so no breakfast outside the hotel.
posted by Maria Anne at 7:40 PM
1 Comments:
Very cute pictures! Glad to see you both are having a good time!
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