wk10

I am 25 now. I can hardly believe it! I wish that I could have had you all here to celebrate my bithday with me, but besides the fact that I was missing you guys I had a very memorable and wonderful birthday.

The days before my birthday, and the day of I received the cards that many of you sent me. Thank you very much, they are decorating my room now.

Tuesday the day of my birthday my Chilean mother let me choose what we were going to have for dinner and let me invite over a friend. I invited Heather and asked for any traditional Chilean meal that I hadn´t gotten to try yet. They ended up making me a traditional Chilean stew which was very delicious and they put a present on my chair which I quite nearly sat on. The day of my birthday was very relaxing day in which I got many happy birthday wishes and hugs from my Chilean friends, my gringo (US) friends, and my Chilean family.

Wednesday I was called on to accompany my friend Zack to a micro-brewery to talk about some things that were bothering him and have some good beer. Zack is my beer drinking buddy here, since my boyfriend spoiled me into liking quality beers. The beer was tastey and hopefully I helped him by offering a friendly ear, because I didn´t have a lot of advice to give.

Then Thursday night Melinda invited me to go out to the House of Rock with her (which for us is the bar where everyone knows our names, if you remember from one of letters about my first weeks here we got to know the staff and owner one slow night and went out for beers with them after they closed.) I bought myself one drink and really wasn´t planning on having anymore, but Melinda decided to tell everyone that it was my birthday and bought me a shot of tequila. Shortly after one of the employees bought me a birthday drink and a few minutes later the owner brought me over a pisco sour. So at the time that Melinda had the band sing happy birthday to me I had three drinks in front of me. I was a good sport however and finished all my birthday presents before I left, and had my first hang over in Chile the next morning. Thanks Melinda!!!

Friday Heather, Amy, and I went shopping for new clothes to wear to my birthday party Saturday. Of course we couldn´t actually stop at buying just one new outfit, because the clothes in our favorite shopping neighborhood downtown are so cheap. Then we all got dressed up in skirts and went out to have a girls night. We went to a new bar and talked and relaxed.

Saturday was my birthday party. My Chilean mom was already working on getting things ready by the time I woke up. At which point I tried to convince her that she didn´t need to do so much and to let me and my friends help her. While I felt guilty that she spent the whole day working on my party, I also felt very happy that she liked me enough to want to give me such a wonderful party. I was elated that everyone that I invited showed up including friends and family of my Chilean family. I received many nice gifts, my favorites being an origami flower that Melinda made me out of dollar bills, and two pairs of wool socks that my Chilean cousin (Pamela) made for me. My Chilean dad made my favorite drink which is white wine with strawberries and my Chilean mom made pork sandwiches and appetizers. After spending a few hour socializing my Chilean sister and one of her friends taught me a little bit of meringue and some of the dances for the current popular modern songs. I still need a lot of lessons and practice, but I have fun pretending that I know what I am doing! Then after the party in my house I wanted to go out dancing in a new neighborhood, so Heather combined my desire for taking my group of guest out dancing with (Javier) her Chilean brother´s plan to get Heather´s group of friends from the United States together with his group of Chilean friends to go dancing. So when we got to Bella Vista we must of had a group of at least more than 20 people. I was a little worried at first that we were not going to have any fun, because it was taking forever to decide what discotheque we were going to go to. As the decision took longer parts of the group were taking off. In the end we ended up at a place I can´t remember the name of but that I liked. Although I never ended up dancing with any of Javier´s friends I had lots of fun dancing with my friends. I liked the club though because they played a variety of different types of music, and I enjoyed dancing with my friends (much more than dancing with guys that I don´t know, which is what usually happens when we go out dancing.)