Mi cumpleaños...

Feliz cumpleaños para mi! Go shorty, it's my birthday, we're gonna party like it's your birthday... On September 30th, I reached yet another year of living and enjoying life… first b-day I’ve celebrated in Guatemala since I turned 18 (some time ago). I had invited friends to got out to Monoloco in Antigua for the festivities. Traffic was horrible on Friday night, as there are some road repairs going on, plus there was a bit of rain as well… what usually takes us 30 – 45 minutes took us about 1hr 30 minutes. After sitting in traffic longer than expected, we got to Monoloco around 8:30 PM. We started off with some beers, and eventually we had a bottle of Solera (aged 18 years… so freaking good) I had brought in to celebrate (had to talk to the owner in order to get the bottle in…).

Plenty of beers were had and of course we finished the bottle of rum… ordered some food, took some pictures, had some more beer, and got kicked out of the place around 1AM … Crashed an afterparty, were a few more beers were consumed. Some of my friends left the afterparty around 2PM, we stayed till 2:30… and just as we were leaving, I got a call from one of my friends saying that the police had stopped them because they were going the wrong way on a one way street (streets in Antigua are somewhat confusing). When they asked my friend for the car registration, he did not have it (thankfully he wasn’t drunk)!!! The police took him to do station, and that’s when I got the call to go down and see if I could come help. I had to drink some water and chew some gum to make sure I appeared sober… Funny thing is, I soon as I got there and started talking to the police officers to see how we could resolve the situation, one of the first questions they asked me was if I was drunk, since I was talking funny (my excuse was I had just returned from The States and my Spanish was a little rusty… hehe). Anyways, the police officers were pissed off at my friend, because they claimed he had acted obnoxiously and not been very cooperative at first. We talked to them and talked to them, I finally asked my friend to leave (since they were really upset with him) and finally negotiated a mutual agreement (after two hours of being there). My friend was able to leave after paying a “fine” and I didn’t get home till 5 AM… good stuff!!!

Early Saturday morning, around 9 AM, my grandma was nice enough to call me… and while I appreciate the gesture, it was way too early. My dad called me about 30 min later, and so did one of my aunts. I was able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours, and finally decided to get out of bed, still extremely tired. Through the day a bunch of friends and family remembers called wishing me a great day. At night, we rented a few movies (Hero and Adventures of Dick and Jane) and had some real good “carne asada” at home… very chill evening…. I was seriously too tired to do anything else.

Here are some pics from Friday night…

Friends... plenty of beer bottels and rum.

Similar pick... just later on.

El Gato, Carlos, and Marianna

Doing some kind of birthday dance... don't ask why.

After the show is the afterparty...

Happy b-day to me!

Thanks to everybody who showed up and everybody who called… plus special thanks to some friends who sent me a couple of packages for my CUMPLEAÑOS (I seriously have the kindest and nicest friends).

Un fuerte abrazo para todos,

CRCP

P.S. People I know who were also born on Sept 30th: Eri’s brother, Alan’s brother, Stephen (kid from the preschool), Johnny Mathis, Truman Capote…