O Positivo

“Okay, fotos?” Our driver, Andres, paused in front of a small street cart on our way to the immigration office.

The French family he escorted with us laughed, too, when we saw what was happening next. The woman operating the “photographs” cart pulled out a small roll of white backdrop and hung it on the bus stop wall.

“Colombia practical?” Andres teased.

All four of us took turns having our picture snapped, which she then printed, sliced, and put in small white paper bags before receiving pesos in payment.

“Blood type?” Andres tried to ask.

I know my blood type. Oxbear, on the other hand, has always had to guess: home birth in a tiny Texan town. I spent awhile last night online with blood type calculators.

“O positivo?”

Close enough. The woman at the cart quickly pulled out a stack of medical lab cards from underneath the paper slicer and hurriedly wrote down our blood info. I’m no detective, but I’m pretty sure we were involved in a less-than legit enterprise this morning. But it had to be done.

Immigration office: packed. It was last night about eight o’clock that the Program Director’s son carefully explained to me and the French couple (albeit in French; talented guy) that our visas were … not what they should be. We would need identification cards as well. And our blood type; for no logical reason whatsoever. Sigh. Then his mother pretended to snip off his long black ponytail. He laughed, and kissed her on the cheek.

So there we were – smushed in a small building and asked to fill out long forms requesting information like, “What is your body build: ‘strong’, ‘average’, or ‘slim’?” I guessed on half of it. Passports, visas, photographs, driver’s licenses, credit cards – 324,000 Colombian pesos, blood type cards, and yes – more fingerprints – and we were done.

Nothing so satisfying as crossing one more thing off the checklist that was never supposed to be on the checklist in the first place. I’ll say this much though – the Colombian friendliness and patience with these mono-lingual Americans definitely helps.

After a long walk through Bogotá later that afternoon, we finally landed at Papa John’s for an early dinner. Yali tore into three cheesy breads with a little wiggling happy dance, after taking in some of the Marlins-Cubs game on the TV in the corner. This may be the closest we’ll get to home before catching that first flight back to Atlanta. Nothing more American than eating pizza while watching the Cubs lose.