It's Hard to Beat a Kid's Birthday Party for Authentic

A trip to conduct field research in Peru with a two-year-old along is not easy. Definitely not easy. But having a two-year-old in tow also opens doors to things we would never be able to experience otherwise. Last weekend was a great example. We were invited to TWO birthday parties for other kids in the Little Lady's pre-school. We could only attend one. Details after the jump.

We've been very lucky to find a great preschool for the Little Lady. We like her teachers. The school is clearly very good quality. The LL is enjoying it (though comes home exhausted after a half-day of pure Spanish). She is already starting to pick up some of the Spanish, mainly in songs at this point. We really could not be more happy with the place we found, which is Nido Mami y Yo in Miraflores (if you're ever in the market for a pre-school in Lima).

She has only been in attendance for about three weeks, and this week she was invited to two birthday parties over the weekend. The first one was Friday afternoon and was a bit of a trip from our apartment, so we decided to pass on that one. But the other was hosted at a tennis club that is just a 15 minute walk from our house. It was a great venue, located in sort of a river gorge flowing to the ocean right in the middle of the city, but a world away. They had a great play area for kids, and the parents rented that out for the party.

Dancing

In addition to having food, a big play area with a trampoline, slide, and a bunch of balls to jump in; there were characters and a little production company involved. As you can see from the pictures, Peppa the Pig was in attendance, and all the kids loved that. They had a nice little program with lots of interactive stuff for the kids to do, a puppet show, and some races and things like that. The parents all got to sit around and drink Pisco cocktails and eat appetizers. All nicely catered. A nice way to do a kids party.

Peppa the Pig

Singing and Dancing, and Lots of It!

The really cool thing about this experience is that we got to see a real, live Peruvian birthday party. We also got to meet lots of the parents from the LL's class. It is always nice to hear what people are talking about, what their concerns are, what they focus on, where they are from, what they do, and on and on. It's also good for me to practice my Spanish. I was able to carry on a decent conversation with one of the dads, but I confess that I was exhausted by the end of this party. One of my Facebook friends recently posted that nothing wears a middle-aged guy out faster than a 2-year old's birthday party. I could not agree more. But in this case it was less an issue of chasing the kids around (since the venue pretty much had that covered and all we had to do was eat and drink) and more an issue of small talk wearing me out in English. Doing it in Spanish is absolutely exhausting. But at least there was plenty of Pisco! And, more importantly, the LL had a great time. Here's a bonus video. The LL needs to learn to spin the other way once in a while.