Cumpleaños de Doña Dalila

January 3rd turned out to be the biggest of all the celebrations down here, bigger than Christmas, Día de Inocentes (like April fool’s day but on Dec 28th), New Year’s, or Kings Day. What would make January 3rd so important? My host grandma’s 65th birthday party of course. After everyone recovered from staying up to late on New Year’s, relaxed for a day, it was time to get back to the grindstone. Invitations were passed out, more family came down, the whole house had to be cleaned, re-cleaned and then decorated with balloons and streamers. Tables and chairs were rented, food prepared and even a marimba band was hired to play. All day we were preparing food, sandwiches, salads, drinks, and prepping the meat for the grill. At seven the party got started with the band starting to play, there were 4 guys with a combined age of probably 300 that were playing the big xylophone like instrument, by far my favorite part of the band. I got roped into grilling the meat with my host dad and uncles, tons of carne asada in great spices and amazingly chicken in a orange juice marinade. Because we had to cook the meat for so many people it took a long time, but we made sure to quality control test the meat frequently, chowing down on almost as much as we served to the rest of the party. After everyone had eaten plenty there was dancing and cake eating that lasted well into the early morning. It ended up being an unexpected but great way to finish up the holiday season,