Thursday, March 5th, 2015

I don’t remember getting up during the night so maybe I slept through.

I got up at 8:30, left the finca at 10:15 and got past the killer dogs undetected.

After a 10 minute wait we were on a bus and this time the police didn’t stop us.

We got off at the Aguacatala station and, for a change, walked across the street and in the direction of Avenida 80 looking for inexpensive clothing stores.  Finally we stopped at a Ragged store where Teresa tried on clothes for about 30 minutes and she finally bought 2 pairs of slacks and a blouse for a total of 184,700.  Afterwards, since we were so close, we stopped at the rattan furniture store Mimbre y Rattan across the street and a block down.  I inquired as to how much one chair similar to what I’m looking for would cost and was told 550mil.  Forget that!

I noticed I have a new bite on my arm.

We took a bus to Viva mall and we had lunch across the street at Mall Laureles.  She had fish at Patacon for 21,500 and I had the chicken plate at Sanjote for about 18mil.

We went back across the street to Viva mall to take some cash out of the ATM.  I first used the Davavienda ATM because the others were in use.  I got some message in Spanish so I guessed it didn’t start with English so I cancelled the transaction.  I switched to a Bancolombia ATM and it seemed to stop processing after I entered my PIN number.  I tried it again with the same result.  I switched to an ATH machine that I knew always works for me and it gave me the message “Pin Tries Exeeded”.  Uh-oh!

I told Teresa I wasn’t going to be able to access my money today.  She went into Exito and withdrew (probably charged) 250mil to her Exito credit card.  

We went across the street to Notaria 31 and sat upstairs for a few minutes.  They close for lunch from 1-2 and at 2pm Dr. Maria (Alejandro?) came in, opened the office and sat down at her desk.  Teresa went in and talked to her for a minute and we were sent next door to Martha’s office.  I understood they could do the Union Libre today for 100mil if we had an official interpreter (another 100mil) to make sure I understood everything.  They called Juan Felipe Sierra and he arrived 30 minutes later.  He told me he was born in Medellin and his parents brought him to New Jersey when he was 15.  He moved to Southern California and when he was 30 he moved back to Medellin.  We chatted for awhile and after another 30 minute wait we were called into Martha’s office again.  I understood that we need to sign documents that say that we have been living together since last October 1^st and 2 years after that we are considered to be legally “married”.  At one point Martha asked if Teresa had any children and that’s when she learned she had a minor child.  She informed us that for us to proceed we would have to have a lawyer create a “document of property” for Teresa to protect her daughter.  It costs something like 1,600,000 pesos and takes 3 months to process.  Teresa asked her to create the document without mentioning Laura to increase her chances of getting a visitor’s visa.  Martha didn’t like that idea and neither did I.  I suggested we come back in September after Laura’s 18^th birthday to complete the Union Libre so we wouldn’t have that problem.  I also suggested the three of us take our chances at the embassy in getting a tourist visa for this June.

We all agreed, Martha saved the document as it was completed thus far, we thanked Juan, gave him 100mil and we left.  Later Teresa told me she’s sad to have lost 100mil.  I told her it was payment for good information; I understand the process and requirements much better now.

We took a bus to Aquacatala and another to Caldas.  We stopped at a restaurant Sasone where for 26mil we shared a whole chicken with drinks.  We took the rest of the chicken with some arepas and potatoes back for Laura.

We walked a block down to Merkepaisa where we picked up a few things and Laura joined us a few minutes later.  Teresa talked to Laura and then invited me to join them tomorrow morning at Laura’s school.

We had to wait about 10 minutes to catch a bus back to the finca.  

We got past the killer dogs undetected.

Teresa tried on all the clothes again and decided a pair of slacks didn’t fit right and she wants to exchange them.

I called USAA and my debit card was locked out but they reset it.

When I checked my emails I had a voice mail from USAA asking me to call their fraud department which I had already done.

I took my sleeping pills at 10:45 and we went to bed at 11pm.

T-shirt of the day: One of a kind.