The girls' behavior is improving. We had a better day because the girls were nicer to each other, and were more respectful to us (they were already pretty good). They are also getting used to going shopping with us. Most of our shopping has been for food, books and clothes. We have a wonderful bookstore just down the street from us. This has helped us in emphasizing literacy and books in Spanish. We have been teaching them some English, but we want to create a strong literacy base in their native language (Sorry, but only those of you who are ESL-Bilingual teachers will understand this).
The first day we went shopping the girls would just choose about anything with bright colors to put in the cart, not knowing what anything was. An example of this was when I went to shop for some little gifts for some of their teachers in the orphanage and our youngest put a packet of baby shower cards in the basket. I had to explain to her what this was, she just liked what it looked like. Today, when we went back to the bookstore, there were a couple of more things we had to explain, but the girls were better at choosing just books (an example was when our second oldest chose a model of an Star Wars fighter thinking it was a toy. She did not understand it was a model that would be fragile and wouldn't last in the orphanage, even if it was put together). One of the things that we noticed about the girls in terms of shopping is that they are not commercialized as the kids in the U.S. and are not asking for the 'latest' items. The closest thing would be the oldest girls asking for some of the current music in CD. The girls do know about Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers but beyond that they do not know much about American pop culture, but rather are very knowledgeable about Latin American pop culture (Julia and Anna will have to teach them about American Idol). It is hard to assume that they don't know what is happening or that they are not aware of current things. An example is that we took them to the movie theater today and they had already seen it.
One thing we have noticed is that the girls personalities compliment each other as if they are 'one entity' even though they have a wide age span. For example, if there is a conflict.. one gives advice, one tells it like it is, one searches for fairness in the conflict, and the another provides the comic relief to break up the tension. These personalities will not be hard to figure out when you meet them. We wonder how when they grow older how independent they would want to be from each other.
One thing I noticed was how I stick out from the women here in terms of my clothes. Walking down the street, most women wear tight jeans, Nice shirts (usually low cut) and high heels, even though it is very mountainous. (I got the heels, but my jeans are much looser now and my shirts are simple and more modest) In the U.S., some people might claim that these women are loose, while here is a common practice. This is similar to P.R. culture, but it shows that these very modest girls have been exposed to things that we would consider inappropriate but have not been expected to conform to that at their age. In Latin America you are expected to take on responsibilities but are not necessarily expected to be independent until you move out of the house and get married. In the U.S., people are taught to be independent as early as graduating from high school so that they have to grow up faster and they are not necessarily encouraged to take parent guidance after high school.
We are looking forward to coming back to the U.S for family, dryers, dishwashers and comfortable beds, but most of all we look forward to the adoption process being done.
We are tired of not being able to talk about the girls or share pictures to anyone for fear of the adoption being negated. We have had several people come and talk to us here, but we are so afraid to talk to people since we have been told not to do so, and when we do we worry about what could happen. We spend 99 percent of our time with the girls but these rules make it difficult to try to go expand that 1 percent.
The people here in the buildings are very nice, but when there are too many people around, we stay indoors in fear that we would be stuck in the position of looking rude by not sharing some information about ourselves and adhering to these rules (This is especially difficult for me and against my cultural background). The girls have been asked to socialize by other kids in the facility, but we are not allowed to let them. Most people figure out that the girls are adopted because there are been other families that have adopted that have stayed here. A lady today was being very nice and offered help in case of an emergency and I had to tell her that I could not accept her help because of the process. Some of the rules that we have to abide by are fairly new so the people in our complex are not aware of the rule change and are possibly being as friendly to us as they are to others. An example of this was today. After the movie and shopping at the bookstore, we walked by a group of middle school and upper elementary grade students. We could not let the girls talk to these kids who they probably wanted to introduce themselves to.
All of a sudden I'm very tired and must go to sleep. We are going out to the countryside tomorrow. It will be an interesting day. --MM