The International Birthday Party

Gillian received an invitation for a b-day party at the local park from a girl in her pre-school class. For those who don't know, she attends a class a few days a week at the university pre-school. Her peers typically include a few kids of grad students and then I guess children of professors or other staff at UCSB.

For some reason this party featured six families:

1) An Austrian family with the grandmother along who spoke limited English
2) An Italian family in which the daughter (in Gilly's class) spoke no English
3) A Japanese family (the host family) who had several family members in attendance who spoke limited or no English
4) A Spanish-speaking family (they left as I was arriving)
5) A lady when I asked her "so you guys are about finished here, right?" because I thought she was the partner of one of my neighbors who is getting ready to graduate, answered "and you are?" So I said "oh sorry, I am Gillian's mom" she was like "oh yeah, my older son is about ready to go to kinder". Whew. She was not the neighbor's partner but she WAS getting ready to finish. Close call.
6) Us

So you can see that the communication at this party was to-ugh. I could only handle about 25 minutes of it before I left, BUT I managed to get a few pics of this party. Let me just say that the hosts really, really tried to please the crowd. It was almost as if they had taken one thing from every American birthday celebration they had ever attended and put it on a self-serve table:





























1) Bag of chips.
2) Fried rice and noodles
3) Tortilla spirals—from Costco
4) Box of cookies
5) Apple Juice, White Grape, and Lemonade
6) Pizza. This one was kind of an enigma because they obviously bought pizza for kids but it was combination and Gilly took one look and was like nope. It was a good idea though.

They had ice cream too, and strawberries. They also brought out a couple of salads. The ice cream, btw, came out at the same time as the other food.





























They put some fun stuff around for the kids, like bubbles on the table:



























Other items of note:

• A tent
• A box of capri sun
• A box of fruit snacks

These items were just spread around the perimeter of the table.

No kids activities, just individual groups standing around. The only people communicating as far as I could tell were the men who I think are profs at the University.



























Here was the cutest kid at the party (imo)



























My walkaways:

1) How cool that my daughter goes to preschool with these international kids!
2) How cute that these people bought absolutely everything under the sun for their daughter's birthday party. They were the sweetest hosts and when I left I saw the father of the family walking down the stairs with more food and a couple of 12 packs of soda. He seemed disappointed I was leaving and I wish I knew what the etiquette was in Japan for staying at a party.
3) I need to come up with better small talk for people who speak limited English
4) If I am not 100% sure I know someone, assume I do not.

Good times.