Today, the 6th, is Anyel's 21st birthday! After I went to Mensajeros and ate lunch on Friday, I walked to Laura's house to try my hand at making carrot cake. As always, we had a BLAST laughing and dancing around in the kitchen, regardless of how the cake turned out. After about 10 minutes in the oven we noticed it was rising a lot more than it should be, and it climbed over the edges of the pan. Then, it was like a bubble popped and the middle sunk back down to the normal level. It came out tasting GREAT, but looking ridiculous. We cut around the top layer on the edges to even it out a bit, and not wanting to waste any, we ate the trimmings. Such sacrifice. We had also made some cream cheese frosting (to die for, I might add), so we covered up the butchering with frosting. It didn't stop there... to personalize the cake a bit more, we adorned the frosting with a sunflower made from shredded carrots, and placed 10 orange candles on top.
We called to see if she wanted to come over so we could surprise her, but she was reading the last bit of Harry Potter. While she finished that and showered, we made a precious slideshow complete with a silly rhyming tale about our friendship, our favorite pictures of her, and some additional, inappropriate sketches from Microsoft Paint. She laughed so hard she cried and had to lay down on the floor to stretch out her stomach when we finally got to show it to her... exactly the reaction we'd hoped for.
Today, after much lying and behind-the-scenes phoning, we got her to El Parque Metropolitano for a surprise barbeque with her family. It was totally her host mom's idea, and it ended up being a great time. Just as we finished cooking the meat, an incredible thunderstorm struck up all around us. One time the lightning struck so close to us that we felt the bang and swore we could smell a fire for a second afterward. Quite the adventure. The best part was that there was some confusion about how old she was turning, so the cake said "22." Toti, her host mom, tried to break off part of the second two, which actually just made it look worse, but we all got a good laugh. I think Anyel was delighted to have them put so much effort into making her feel like a part of the family, and going to the trouble of tracking US down to invite us. Pretty neat. Lupe, my host mom, sent me to the barbeque with a necklace "from our whole family." We live with some amazing people.
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2 comments:
Larkin, I don't know how I missed...until right now...that you had a blog. WOWser, It'll take me a bit to get updated. You write much more often than i do :) Tell Anyel I say happy belated bday. I just wanted to say that I would LOVE to talk ESL with you, but Arizona really sucks for ESL, we have crappy legislation that leaves monolingual students in regular ed classrooms most of the time, and stops servicing students all together once they are "intermediate" ...we actually use the acronym ELL--English Language Learner. You mentioned that we should talk the next time we see each other. I hope that is SOONer than later.
LOVE YOU!
It sounds like an amazing/fun day of friending! My favorite!
Today I made crepes for my roommates and we ate them while watching a movie. It was a very good and relaxing day!
I miss you/love you!
P.S. Would you ever consider coming here for the Winter (after Ecuador, of course) and teaching ESL for a few months? We need teachers for an large influx of ESL students during the winter months. I would LOVE you to come!
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