May Birthdays

A bunch of May birthdays and a long weekend at the end of the month provided us with a good excuse to get together with the other Fulbright teachers and families. Monday, May 21st, the Chileans would be celebrating their national naval heroe, Arturo Prat, with a day off from work and school. So the Friday before, Bill drove the "We're not the jet set" white mini bus with the Heiners and Terry, who had flown in from Antofagasta, to our favorite cabins. After I finished up with work and the girls were home from school, my friend Rossana and her daughter, Josefina, came and picked us up and we, too, headed south towards Chillán. We got to Cabañas Los Andes very late that night, but the cabin was toasty warm with a roaring fire, and Melinda had some spaghetti on the stove all ready for us. We had been to these cabins before in the summer, in February, and it felt great to be back again.

We woke up on Saturday to a beautiful, sunny day and decided a hike up to Shangri-La was in order. We had visited this old, abandoned hotel at the end of a trail marked by a wall of black volcanic rock on horseback in the summer. Now it was even more beautiful in its crisp, fall colors. Trees stood draped in sage-green moss and the cloudless sky was an inviting blue. High up on a ledge, it felt like we were on the top of the world. It was a nice hike, about three hours round-trip, and we worked up a pretty good appetite by the time we got back.


There were fifteen of us in all, occupying three cabins. We did some furniture rearranging, carrying the dining room tables and chairs from two of the cabins into the third one, creating one long table for our fabulous feasts. Saturday night we enjoyed soup, chili and Dan's famous longaniza (no Fulbright party is complete without them), and then sat around the cabin singing along to Dan's tunes on the guitar. It was so nice to all be together again, the last time had been in January at English Summertown. We were missing Annie, though, who was out on Juan Fernández island, and Marisol, Doug and Nathan, who had already made plans to visit the north of Chile this particular weekend. Besides Rossana and Josefina, we had two other newcomers to the group: Catherine's brother Gary and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a pastry chef at a very exclusive Polynesian resort on the island of Hawaii, and she made a delicious chocolate macademia nut pie for our dessert on Sunday night that I am still dreaming about!


On Sunday, May 20th, we celebrated Dan and Roxy, whose birthday was that day. We sang a memorable song we had written for Dan which featured some of the highlights of his year here in Chile, and Roxy had a fun scavenger hunt which led to some candy and a pair of earrings. We also had three other birthdays to celebrate: Melinda and Sarah had each had a birthday earlier in the month, and Elizabeth's was coming up the next week. We sang "Happy Birthday" in English and then in Spanish, and then Elizabeth taught us a drum chant where we sang in celebration of each of the five who were celebrating their birthdays.


In addition to a big birthday bash, we were also celebrating Thanksgiving. Perhaps you are wondering why we would be celebrating Thanksgiving in May? Remember that here, in the southern hemisphere, it is now fall, and when we were celebrating Thanksgiving in November, it was a gorgeous spring day, much warmer than what we are used to. In fact, I remember the Thanksgiving of the year before we came to Chile. Sarah and I were in the Thanksgiving Day parade in Chicago with the Barefoot Hawaiians, on a sub-zero day. When I saw those fire dancers race out at the last minute, just as we were up next in the parade, clad in nothing but a little grass skirt, I froze in my step and nearly died of frostbite just looking at them. Well, we celebrated a typical fall Thanksgiving this time, not too hot and not too cold, but plenty to be thankful for.


On Monday we relaxed at one of the hot springs up the road from the cabin. Now, that's the way to end a wonderful, long weekend!

For more photos from our weekend celebration, click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/MayBirthdays

The May birthday celebrations continued well into June, when we finally got around to hosting birthday parties for the girls with their new Chilean friends. Sarah had a fun party with her three best friends here: Cami, Cata and Javiera. The girls all made pizzas and then played games and ran around outside.

A couple of weeks later, Roxy had her party with all the girls from her class. All seven of them came over to the apartment and they watched a Steve Martin movie while they ate pizza from the nearby Pizza Hut. One thing we are so looking forward to upon our return is some delicious Chicago-style stuffed pizza.