November 5, 2019
Our first morning together as a family! Matt woke up and cooked probably 5 dozen pancakes, 20 something eggs, a whole pig, etc. We quickly saw that the kiddos would just keep eating if there was food, so Matt kept cooking. Matt and I had many conversations about how in the world are we going to keep this up back home. Our grocery bills alone were going to bankrupt us, but by the end of the trip we realized they slowed down their eating at each meal as they started to understand there will always be enough food so they didn’t have to overstuff themselves at every meal.
After breakfast, Matt, Ashley, Isaac and Israel left to go to the doctor’s office. There were only two Embassy approved doctors in Belize — one in Belize City and one in Belmopan (capital city of Belize). I scheduled their appointments for 9am on Tuesday at the office of Dr. Mendez in Belize City. This appointment was very important. They needed all the necessary vaccines and blood work done and results back before we could even go to our Embassy interview (which I had scheduled for the following Tuesday). Here was our first major setback! When Matt arrived at Dr. Mendez’s office, he was told blood results could take 7-10 days to come back AND blood tests for minors were only done on Mondays at Belize Medical Associates LTD (the only place in Belize to get blood work drawn on minors apparently). Obviously, we were not going to make our scheduled Embassy interview on Tuesday, November 12th when we had to go back the following Monday, November 11th to get blood drawn, wait 7-10 days for the results and then have Dr. Mendez sign off and seal them for the Embassy. I had multiple calls with our stateside agency before leaving home to nail down a schedule based on all the information they knew, but it is very difficult to adopt from Belize and when adoptions do happen they are few and far between resulting in unknown rules, regulations and schedule changes in country. You can imagine our disappointment. Every step in this process was contingent on the success of the step before. Because we had to push back the blood work, we had to push back the embassy interview, which pushed back getting our embassy packet before we were supposed to depart on November 21st. We knew to anticipate delays, but when you are in a foreign country booking houses, flights, transportation, etc. with not a lot of notice (or when you don’t have your community support from home) it weighs heavily on you. Not to mention spending another week adds thousands of dollars to the trip. YES the families do all this themselves. Your agency helps prepare you, but you are basically on your own to work out the logistical details. Another surprise that day was the cost of everything! We were told and had prepared for $100 US per medical exam. We were not anticipating the blood work costing 400 BZE ($200 US) each child and the vaccines costing 475 BZE ($237.50 US) each child resulting in a $1,140 blow to the budget.
Although these things were incredibly disappointing, all we could do was mourn the changes and then hand it over to God. We spent the rest of the day swimming, feeding Debbie shrimp and hanging out with the other iguana’s, fishing, drinking from coconuts and more night swimming as a family. The day started beautifully, brought about some very sad and emotional hours, but ended with a perfect afternoon and night. Mr. Rene even helped dad clean the fish we caught so that we could cook them for dinner. Here are some pictures to prove it…
Swimming
Coconuts
Debbie and the iguanas
Fishing
