From Mad Hatters to Tea Parties

As promised, this is the second of three posts in reverse order about the last few weeks. The week before the Halloween party, my Mad Hatter Kelly and I had a tea party. Fitting, no?

Kelly teaches a bible study to kids grade 6-12 at the English-language church she attends out in the province of San Isidro, and had invited eight people other than her and I to have a slumber party in her studio loft, in secret hopes that I'd tell her she was being silly and she should just have it in the lovely new apartment that'll be the focus of my next post. She guessed right, and at about 4pm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, we got on the train from Chinatown to San Isidro to pick up our girls.

There were a total of nine of us, four adults and five kids. The youngest girl was a fourth grader in Miss Joy's class (one of the chaperones and our Alice), and the oldest was a High School Senior. We hauled the kids onto the train, from the train station to the metro station, and from the metro station from my house. A bit stressful, but that's when the fun started.

We broke into groups to make a veggie tray, sandwiches for our tea, scones and lemon curd, and fruit salad for breakfast the next morning.

Over tea, we all shared our favorite part about being a girl, and giggled riotously while trying to guess what historical woman had been slapped on our foreheads. After dinner, we played a game of cranium on our food teams (Go Team Scone!), painted our fingers and toes, and cuddled into a mass to watch a chick flick before turning out lights. Our guests engineered my living room so that the seven guests could sleep downstairs and leave my double bed and loft for Miss Kelly and I. Blissfully, after a tiny bit of whispering, everyone passed out cold.

The morning was a bit of a blur of girls getting ready and packed up to go back to SI for church. I had some fruit salad, braided some hair, and then set in to write a policy memo assignment due the next day. Kell dropped back by to pick up bedding and furniture she'd brought over for the event, and the two of us did a quick once-over to put my house more or less back in order. I got the house clean just in time to start preparing for Halloween!

I was struck again by how much I love being with children, and how little I get to be myself here. Kelly laughed at my antics all NIGHT, and was SHOCKED to discover what a kook I am. That's pretty sad- we'd been friends for two months and this was the first time she got to see me cut loose??? More than other people seeing the real me, I gotta say I miss the real me!

I'm starting to tear myself loose in yoga, and I have kooky guests in two weeks followed by return to Kookland in five. Thank goodness. I don't know how much more serious I can stand.