Venezlano birthday parties are over the top. Incredible. The stuff movies are made of.
We got our first invitation shortly after school started. The invitation was "My Little Pony" - one of the kinds we find at Wal-Mart and fill in the blanks. I thought that the caliber of the invitations would be an indication of the caliber of the party. I mean, come on, I had survived many a Seigel Fest - how elaborate could it be?
The party was posted to start at 3:00 - school ends at 2:00 on Wednesdays. I was also warned by ALL of my American friends that the start time is relative. DO NOT get there until at least an hour has past. Why would you put the start time at 3:00 when you really will not start until 4:00? This practice makes me itchy and scratchy. My husband and I are routinely the losers that show up on time (maybe even 5 minutes early for any occasion - in fact, I have even made him drive around the block because I was sick of being the first person there AGAIN). We left as late as I could stand it - 3:20 and headed out to parts unknown. Of course, we got lost. My wonderful and patient driver, Eric, asked many people for directions, called the hostess and even called Chevron and no one could find the place. The directions we were given was the name of the neighborhood and the name of the apartment building - no one really uses street names and God forbid an address here.
In desperation, I called my personal savior, Karen Mazur (my brilliant and excellent ex-pat friend who has lived here for over 4 years and is fluent and knows absolutely everything) who was able to direct Eric to the party. This had us arrive a fashionable 1 hour late. My pulse was racing and I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but arrived in style.
We walked up the stairs to the apartment building. It was huge, beautiful and set into a large hill in Valle Arriba. From the street level I could see a large, blow up slide/bouncy thing and knew we had found the party. The vigelante let us in as we were well dressed and holding a present. As we made our way up the stairs, I began to see how the party was unfolding. Most of the nice apartment buildings in Caracas have "Party Rooms" on the first floor - no one will live there due to security so they find other uses for the space. In front of the party room was a green space and we could see that not only was there a bouncy castle/slide, but a tequeno maker, popcorn machine, face painters, slide, swings, and ice cream cart. I was greeted by a tuxedo-uniformed server (I am NOT kidding) who offered me an assortment of hors devours. Madeline immediately took off to join the melee of kids, and Katherine and I slunk off to find a quiet space to do some homework. The mother's of the kids were all sitting at a table together speaking Spanish. The DJ started and the music got loud, so I released Katherine to play with the other kids as the noise was too great to do anything productive school-work wise.
The other mothers invited me to the table and I did meet some very nice ladies. I also got to meet K - who is from the US and super nice and fun. We admired the extensive decorations in the party room - tables draped in pink and purple and chairs in the contrasting fabrics with bows in the back. Six foot tall felt flowers adorned the cake table and ballon arrangements dotted the room. K assured me that "this was nothing" compared to the other parties she had seen in pre-school the year before. Soon after our conversation the magician arrived to entertain the children for an hour. After he was done the face painters became party MC's and led the children into party games and the pinata. By the time the pinata was ruptured - candy and toys spilling out into the lawn - I had to call my children home. Julia was cooking her first dinner, and we still had to pick up Chris from the office. We picked up our party favor on the way out - hand decorated crown and wings combo for Madeline - worth at least three times than the gift we brought.
On the way home, full of candy, ice cream, and exhausted, Katherine remarked, "Mom, we could NEVER have afforded a party like that." "You are absolutely right," I replied. The birthday girl was precious, and her parents genuinely nice people. We were very lucky to have been invited.
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