Marine Ball, Thanksgiving, and Life

We never went to the Marine Ball in Bangkok, because it was extremely expensive and a major undertaking given that we lived outside of the city and Saturday night traffic could be insane.  In Bogota though, it was much closer and less expensive, so we figured, why not?

We got the tickets easily enough, but I had the worst luck getting a dress.  First I ordered one from the same place as several other people, but for some unknown reason, mine got sent back.  Then, I tried again through Amazon.  It's a moth later, and that one STILL hasn't shown up.  I finally threw up my hands and picked something out of my closet. 

In all my worry about the dress, I had completely forgotten about the beautification process.  Luckily, my friends hadn't.  They helped me get appointments for hair, makeup, and nails at a nice little place just down the street.  Since my dress was black and white, I thought red nails would be fun.  They made me happy.

I hadn't gotten my hair and makeup professionally done since my wedding, so I wasn't quite as enthused about that process.  The guy was really nice, but he put on a LOT of makeup.

When I got home, the girls weren't sure what to make of me.  Elena kept looking at me and giggling, and Vivian did this big dramatic thing like she didn't know who I was.  Crazy kids.

Jeff and I finished getting ready, and then some friends came over to pre-party.

For next year, we'll know to pre-party longer and arrive later.  There was a "cocktail hour" that started at 6:00. It was a bunch of people crowded into the hallway area in front of the ballroom with two overpriced and understaffed bars.  Once we finally got in, the room was nice.  We were at a table with friends which helped, although we had to practically kidnap a waiter to get the bottles of wine on the table opened.  The ceremony was interesting.

They were also kind enough to keep the music to background volume during dinner, so that we could hear each other and enjoy each other's company.

After dinner, they put on some good dance tunes, and my friends and I got up to dance, while Jeff and his friends stayed at the table to drink and talk.  It was a fun night.

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving. We hosted for the first time, which was a lot of fun, but also a LOT of work.  I started the day before with pumpkin pie and gravy base.

Elena carefully supervised the pumpkin pie cooking process and conducted a taste test the next morning, to make sure they were celebration ready.

Our Thanksgiving started early with a sausage ball enhanced parade viewing party.

The commissary was out of actual sausage, so we used ground pork and spices to make our own.  It wasn't as good as Jimmy Dean's, but it got the job done.  We also served cinnamon rolls, mimosas, and bloody maries, so everyone was happy.  Elena got dressed up for the parade, but then refused to smile for a picture.

After the parade, Vivian got dressed up and smiled nicely. 

Elena made up for her previous grouchiness by helping to set the table.

I got to work spatchcocking the turkey while Jeff watched and kept telling me to be careful of my fingers, which were still pretty from the Marine Ball.

I was pretty impressed that I could get it mostly done with the kitchen shears.  There was just one piece of bone that required knife sawing at the end.  Then it was a quick flip and rib crack and the turkey was spatchcocked!

I'm really glad I figured this all out last year, since there is NO WAY a full sized turkey would have fit in our current, teeny tiny oven.  But with spatchcocking, it fit nicely on a cookie sheet, and into the oven it went.  I was a bit worried about our temperamental oven, but it did its job, and the turkey came out crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

I also made the same crock pot stuffing as last year, this time with our homemade sausage.  All the guests brought extra dishes, and we decided the best way to serve was to just line all the dishes up in the kitchen and let people make up their own plates.  Luckily, we have a lot of counter space.

What we were limited on was chairs and tables.  We managed to fit all the adults around a makeshift "table".

While the kids got their own special set up with pillows.

We all stuffed ourselves silly, and then it was time for everyone to roll home.  Jeff and I got the girls into bed and most of the mess cleaned up.  

The hardest part of Thanksgiving was that the girls and I had to get up and go to school the next day.  Luckily, we've gotten into a pretty good morning routine where they ride with me.  I'm getting the hang of driving in Bogotá, and while the jerks who think that they're the only ones that matter piss me off on a daily basis, the only thing that really frightens me is the potholes.  There are some HUGE potholes on the "highway" between our house and the school.  Added to that is the fact that the buses pick up and drop people off on the right hand side of the five lane road, while the bus lane is on the far left side of the road, so the buses regularly cut across ALL the middle lanes of traffic, while motorcycles zoom in between the lanes.  It is not a relaxing commute.  The girls are great passengers though, and we have fun listening to music, so it is doable, just not my favorite part of the day.  Elena is in full Frozen/Elsa mode, so we have to listen to "Let It Go" at least once each day.

Once we get to school, I drop everything in my corner, which I've made much more cozy and colorful than it was at the beginning of the year.

And it's so great to be in the same place as the girls all day.  For example, Vivian's class invited parents to come see the ecolodge islands they'd designed, and it was super easy for me to pop over and admire hers during my planning period.

We have to park quite a ways from the school, and there's this really cool playground we have to walk by most days, which is hard for the girls to do.  The other morning, for some unknown reason, there was almost no traffic, and we got to school early, so I let the girls have some play time.

Part of the reason we have to hustle past the playground in the afternoons is that we have to get Vivi to swimming twice a week.  She's still more of a dreamer than a hardcore swimmer, but she enjoys it.  The other day they had a fun day competition and she won a chocolate medal, which she was very pleased with.

Elena is pretty worn out after school most days, especially on Fridays when there's no nap, because we get out of school early.  She needs a bottle and some quiet time before she's pleasant to be around.

We finally got the pictures hung last Tuesday, just in time for Thanksgiving, so it is really starting to feel like this apartment is our home.  The goal for this weekend is to get the Christmas decorations up.  The holiday season has already begun in Bogotá.  Christmas trees and Christmas lights are going up all over.  The other night we were putting the girls to bed when we heard lots of loud explosions.  After a moment of concern, we realized it was fireworks, and we could see them from our balcony!

It was a fantastic display, and it went on for quite a while.  We found out afterwards that it was put on by our local mall to celebrate the start of the Christmas season.  I think we're really going to enjoy the way Colombians do Christmas.

International Day, Halloween, and Other Diversions

One of our main reasons for picking the school we did for the girls was that it was the most international, so we were excited to see how their international day would be.  Each country got to do a little march around the field and a presentation.  The U.S. students decided they wanted to do a pie eating contest.  There was also a contingent that wanted to do something Thanksgiving related, so we ended up with a pumpkin pie eating contest.

After much drama with our gas oven, including it leaking gas and then the pilot light not lighting, the embassy negotiated with our landlord for a new electric oven.  It's still a pretty crummy oven.  I had to get an oven thermometer, because the indicator outside has nothing to do with the temperature inside.  It's also very poorly insulated and hot to the touch, but it managed to produce two edible pumpkin pies.

The adults involved decided it would be more sensible to have a pie slice eating contest rather than having the kids eat the whole pie.  It ended up being really fun, and we got some good pictures of kids with pie all over their faces.  Vivian signed up to be "pie support", meaning she carried the pie plate.  Elena wanted to be a judge and decide who finished first.

Overall, it was a really nice day.  We had a big field with a stage at one end and a tent for each country in a semi-circle around it.

There were lots of yummy foods to try, and behind the stage, there were several bouncy houses for the kids to have fun in.  The theme was birthday, because this year is the school's 20th anniversary.

I barely saw Vivian the whole day.  She went off with a group of friends and had a great time.  Elena was a little overwhelmed at the beginning of the day. She was clingy and super fussy.  But as the day went on, she got the hang of it, and ended playing in the field behind the tents with a friend of hers from Canada and another from Italy (the tents on either side of us).

She showed her patriotism the Disney way ;-) The girls were both pretty good about keeping their hats on, and I had been really careful to put sunscreen on all our faces, but I forgot about our arms, since we were all wearing a sweater or a jacket in the chilly morning, so we all ended up with lobster arms the next day.  We will be better prepared next year.

International Day was a Friday, and the following Monday, the girls and I got a surprise day off.  There's no snow here in Bogotá, but there are taxi protests where the taxi drivers intentionally block traffic.  Piedad managed to make it to our house with minimal problems, and Elena had a lot of fun helping her clean the house.

After that, the girls basically had a three day week, because Friday was an all day Halloween party.  We finally got plates for the car, jumped the battery that had given up from being unused for months, and got gas in the car, so the girls rode to school with me in mostly regular clothes, and then went full Halloween at school.  Elena's costume had a tail, so it really wasn't car friendly.

The PTA really went overboard with the Halloween party.  They hired a professional party planning company, and there were 13 game stations for the kids to rotate through.  I was with Vivian's group, and we ran out of time to do all the stations.  There were some that were a lot of fun though, and as the final activity, the kids got different colored little stuffed monsters that they could then add arms, legs, eyes, etc. to.  The embassy had a Halloween party from 3-5, but after their full day, the girls were really not up for another party, so we headed home.  Maybe next year we'll be able to do both.

What skipping the embassy party meant though, was that the girls didn't get to do any traditional trick or treating.  Luckily, some of our friends live in a building that was having a Halloween party complete with trick or treating on Halloween itself.  The girls were more than happy to get back in their costumes, and grab their pumpkins.

Vivian was Uma from Decedents 2, the daughter of Ursula. Elena was Gecko from PJ Masks.  The party itself turned out to be a bit too loud and crowded for the girls, so they opted to play outside until the trick or treating got started.

We learned that apartment building trick or treating is incredibly efficient, and in less than an hour, the girls pumpkins were quite full.

The have completely forgotten about their pumpkins full of candy since then, but in the moment they were absolutely thrilled.

The next couple weeks of work were pretty busy for me. I moved from doing learning support in primary to a similar role in secondary.  It's tough to have to start back at square one with getting to know my students, but I am back with my middle school people after three years, so I am super happy about that.  Jeff has been keeping busy at work as well, so weekends have mostly been about recovery and trying to get stuff sorted out, like making sure my phone is registered with my passport, so that Claro doesn't turn it off.  

Sunday has consistently been football day, and we usually have at least a few people over.  Last week, one of my friends made the suggestion that the dads could watch football, while the kids played, and the ladies could go out to lunch at a nice Japanese restaurant called Osaka. Brilliant!  There were six ladies all together, and we had a lot of fun trying out and sharing different dishes.  My favorite for taste was the scallop with truffle butter.

The favorite for flair was fish ceviche with fire in the middle.

There was another table of ladies next to us, and we saw the fire at their table, so we had to have it for ourselves. I've promised Jeff that I'll go back to the restaurant with him.  

We have also been conducting a highly scientific buffalo wings experiment.  The first step was becoming addicted to Rappi.  Rappi is a service where you can order pretty much anything online (pizza, milk, gasoline, cash), and they will deliver it to your house, usually within an hour.  We dabbled with it for a month, and then stepped up our game to be Rappi Prime members, where you pay one monthly fee and then you don't pay any delivery fees. I think the tipping point was when I discovered they would deliver gin and tonic in a can. The winner of our wings competition was a place called, straightforwardly enough, Buffalo Wings.

The main reason for their victory was that they were the only place that included sauce on the actual boneless wings.  All the other places gave you chicken tenders with a side sauce.  They also got extra points for automatically including carrots and celery and for having a wide range of sauces in different spiciness levels available.  We have become a bit addicted.

This weekend I had another ladies lunch.  This was at a place called Roxanne Gin Bar.  There seem to be a lot of gin bars around Bogotá. I don't like to mess too much with my gin and tonic, so I went with a more classic version.

I also tried the risotto croquettes and grilled octopus.

Overall, it was a fun place for drinks and snacks, but not really a high priority dinner destination.

This weekend was also Veterans' Day.  The girls and I had school on Friday, but Jeff was off.  He's been talking a lot about how much he misses the massages we got in Thailand, so I found him a Thai massage place and booked him a happy Veterans' Day massage.  He thoroughly enjoyed it and payed for a massage for me the next day. The man who owns it is French, married to a Colombian, but all the ladies who work there are Thai.  It was all so nice and familiar.  It was also a nice bonus that everyone there spoke English, which is unusual here in Bogotá.  Even the people at the Four Seasons spa didn't all speak English.

The girls have been exploring too.  Elena is loving school.  She made her first volcano in her science elective this week and was thrilled at the result.

Of course, it's a long day for her, and at least a couple times a week she naps on the way home.

The girls cracked me up the other day when they set up a viewing station for the construction site next door.

We took advantage of the nice weather this morning to explore some more of our neighborhood, including a photo op at the Kitchen Aid store.

We also grabbed lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.  It was nice that they had an American menu with Colombian touches like mango juice.

Elena was intrigued by her guitar plate, and Vivian was very happy with her steak and her people watching perch.

Viv also loved her dessert of apple cobbler.  For Elena, I asked for a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a small scoop of chocolate.  This is what she got.

Luckily, she knew enough to stop after a few bites of each.  They also gave her a balloon on the way out.  She is so spoiled here.

While we enjoy exploring, we also like our lazy family days at home.  The girls seem to be very happy here, and that makes everything else so much easier.