21st in Chile!

Adrienne, one of the girls in my program, celebrated her 21st birthday last Thursday. She didn’t have any plans for the occasion, so John, Vaish and I decided to arrange a surprise birthday party for her. Last Monday, we went shopping in the center in Viña for supplies. Our first stop was a children’s party store where we bought streamers, balloons, and pretty hip Kung Fu Panda masks . Our next task was to find the essential part of any birthday party: a cake. We realized pretty quickly that it was not smart for 3 extremely indecisive people to be in charge of picking out the cake. So many choices: pineapple, strawberry, apple, chocolate, chocolate with caramel (I could go on forever). We bought a few cake slices to taste test the different flavors and finally settled on a chocolate cake with dulce de leche (caramel) between the layers. Planning birthday parties in Chile is fun... and delicious!

A few of us waiting for Adrienne to arrive with Rose's little sister.

Rose offered her house up for the party location since my apartment wouldn’t really accommodate many people. She has 3 adorable young host siblings that were equally eager to partake in the party! We told Adrienne that a few people had to work on a class project at Rose’s house and that she should meet us there to go out to eat afterwards. She was clueless and extremely surprised when she walked in and was pummeled with balloons thrown by people in animal masks. It was priceless. We had a lot of fun just talking, listening to music, and watching Rose’s little host sister toss around her pet hamster.

The birthday girl!