Feliz Cumpleaños Mom!!!
Happy Birthday Mom! Despite the fact you are getting older, I think you are looking better than ever!! See you soon!
Happy Birthday Aunt Pat!!!
Today is one of my favorite aunt’s birthdays! And luckily for me, I’m now in West Hartford and will hopefully get to see her. Happy Birthday Aunt Pat, I hope you have a wonderful day!
Fiestas Patrias
It is the big holiday weekend here in Chile and the celebrations are going on full time. The grocery store was packed with people getting prepared for the next few days. Its like Memorial Day, Labor Day and the 4th all put together. On Friday night we had our own Fiestas Patrias Celebration on the reciento. Food (empanadas, kebobs), drink (beer and wine) and performances, music and dancing! A good time was had by all (everybody kept asking how long it would be until Lisa gets back) and luckily I had my video camera. I’ve quickly thrown together a 13min film showcasing the festivities. Enjoy!
Click here for the movie.
45 MB in size. Right-click to save movie to disk.
Here she comes…
Yesterday was the beginning of hurricane Ophelia. It was windy and rainy. Not exactly a good beach day. We were able to take walks, go swimming, and go in the hot tub. So all was not lost. We did have to prepare the house for the upcoming storm, which means, bring in all the furniture, and clean up outside. You would be shocked at the amount of crap people leave at the beach house. Tons of old toys and such.
So you may ask, what do 9 people stuck inside for their vacation do? Well some of us read and relax. Mainly Jay, Lauren and I.
Some of us do puzzles. Mainly Cara, Jerry, Joel. Al and I helped some. This puzzle was a pain in the butt. We found it here, and of course as we do it, we found that 2 pieces were missing. But all was well, they were able to finish it anyways.
When the boys went shopping to prepare for the hurricane, they came back with some fun games. So we play Jenga, and they got yahtzee, which most of you know is one of my favorite!! They also got ping pong paddles, so Jerry made a net out of tinfoil for the table so we could play.
We alsao get to eat tons of yummy food, of course. Joel made his awesome corn dip yesterday, and Jay made our dinner. Her always requested, awesome lasagna. She also made us yummy brownies!
And finally, as always we have our fun drinking games to last into the wee hours of the night (morning)
Sun, Seaweed, and Fun
Today we had a great beach day. As I said earlier, the sea was calmer and the wind was down, and we were able to swim. There was a ton of nasty seaweed in the water, and I had issues trying to swim. Cara and I attempted but the seaweed combined with the shelly bottom, made it too hard, so we used the pool to cool off. We were also able to fish in the ocean. Alan and Joel were the only ones to catch a fish today. We had a beautiful sunset tonight, and a wonderful meal that Lauren and Criss made- yummy kabobs!!! Some of the boys are planning on trying to catch some sharks tonight while the rest of us hang out and play games. As of right now we aren’t going to be evacuated but everyone is being pessimistic and saying we will be. I of course, will not believe it, and plan to get some great pics as the hurricane comes through.
Fishing
Yesterday, the boys and Cara went fishing while the rest of us relaxed by the pool. They caught tons of fish and had a great time. They go to this spot that I would love to fish at, because they all caught lots of fish. Cara even caught something on her first cast. Criss apparently got bit by a fish. Afterwards, we all hung out at the pool, got tan/burnt and the boys had a cannon ball dash. Cara, Joel, and I fixed dinner last night. We had burgers and dogs, and taco salad. Joel also made these amazing clams in a garlic cream sauce. I never realized how much I liked clams until this weekend. The night befrore Al had made clams with a buttery crumb topping. Yummy! We then watched the Eagles get spanked, and Janets friends Joe and Stephanie came over to hang out with us. They’re staying down the street. The news on the hurricane is that it’s presently a tropical storm and coming towards us. They’ve evacuated Hatteras, hopefully we won’t be following. Hatteras is about an hour away. The earliest we would have to leave would be Wed morning. Today is looking to be a perfect beach day. The red flag is down is now we can swim, and it’s supposedly going to be sunny and in the 80s with hardly any wind. Joel has already made good use of the day, and has gone fishing in the waves. Unfortunately, no fish for him yet. More updates to come…
Meanwhile in Chile…
Not everyone gets to go off and play. Some of us have to stay here in Chile and save the world work. Lisa seems to be updating things just fine from the Outer Banks (although we’ll see if she stays…) but I’d thought I keep you and her up-to-date on the other hemisphere. We are fast approaching 18 Septiembre, the Chilean Independence Day. For all the patriotism you see near the 4th in the US, we’ve got nothing on the Chileans. Things get rolling as soon as September arrives and nearly everywhere you go gets decorated with flags and banners and balloons. Since the Chilean flag is red, white and blue, it all feels very familiar. Nearly all the taxis have two small flags on the front, so they all look like diplomatic taxis. The actual holiday is on Sunday, which is sort of a bummer since we don’t get the day off then. Unlike the US. they don’t have separate “observed” holidays on Mondays. But, since they have nearly 20 holidays a year, we still get a lot even if half lie on weekends (some always do — like Easter). But don’t feel too bad for me since I still get a four day weekend. How? Well the 19th is Glories of the Army day, which is about the coolest name for Armed Services Day. Then the 20th is some holiday that is only really celebrated in La Serena. Since apparently we can’t take off for that reason, it has also become AURA-O Director’s Day which we can get off work for. AURA is the semi-governmental organization that manages things here for Gemini and the US observatory.
Tune in next time for: rabbits, flowers and fence talk. Whoo hooo!
