Friday, March 21, 2008

Farewell parties

Everyone knows what a farewell party is. A couple of your closest friends gathering together to say goodbye / trip to those how are starting a new journey. As I said before (in other post named “meeting new people”) the idea of organize reunions are to meet new people; but in this parties the idea is to get even more close with those whom you want to become neighbor of.

When you start the migration process you start feeling a bit lonely and out of the planet, not many people share your same ideas and realities; so a way to deal with it is to find more friends, share your picture and open up your mind. But this isn’t enough, you need to find those whom fulfill you somehow, whom you feel comfortable with and as the time goes by you start to have some connection and friendship.

The same thing happened to us with other couples and families way ahead of us in the process and we could not let them go ahead without a proper reunion and “have a nice trip and see you soon…” the good see you soon.

Those with a path already walked invited us to share a night with them, something small but nice, just family and closest friends, it was our first farewell party, saying goodbye to Ricardo and his family as well to Jea, and it was so nice that we started the feeling to organized something alike. The first experiment was the Reinaldo’s farewell on hooters (also mentioned in other post). Everything was ok and another date was set to another reunion, another friend on its way (Victor and Betzy family).


The Victor’s family farewell party was hosted on my house. It started Sunday at 10 am and ended Monday at 1am, all day menus was subs sandwiches, beer, coke, snacks, etc. It was amazing the quality of the people… everyone took anything to the party, it didn’t matter so much what it was, but at least something to eat or to get distracted made the reunion memorable and thanks god the party showed exactly how I wanted to say goodbye to these dear friends. Again at the end of the party another reunion was set; same place, same channel (hehe, Spanish way to say same hour, location and conditions) this time was Moira’s family (my dear and liberated Moira, Alfonso and Guille).

The Moira’s family farewell was planed Saturday morning till Sarvo (Saturday afternoon) but again the night came, everyone chatting and having a great time. This time menu was meat and chicken skewers, “guasacaca pico e’ perico” (a sauce made with advocado, onions, tomato and parsley finely chopped and mixed with a little bit of pepper and salt) and cassava with milk cream sauce. It was simply magnificent and hopefully they liked it.

In the end, another party was on its way and the arrangement was to organize these parties once every month to say goodbye to our closest friend and those you are on its way to become close.

If you want to organize this kind of reunions all you need is.
  • Proper clean location, not too cold, not to hot.
  • Chairs… Unless you want to torture your guests you need chairs for them to rest. Tables are not required unless you’re menus requires it.
  • Background music isn’t required and in some cases, will be not desired. In our case wasn’t necessary.
  • Flexible menus… It means, if you are going to prepare food, make different flavors, variety is the key point to make everyone happy.
  • Plenty of snacks… the people is going to be more distracted than hungry and need something easy to eat but constant. Snacks will do it. Bring some nachos, cheese balls and stuff like that. Try also some sweet but remember, sweet will be over first, so keep it out side of the stares until you know everyone invited has arrived.
  • Plenty of drinks… this is vital, have sodas, water, beers, ice… everything needed to have a nice refreshing drink made in less than 10 seconds because people will talk a lot… and we you talk a lot you mouth turns into a hot and dry desert.
  • Reservoirs. Other key points are the reservoirs because you don’t know exactly how much time the reunion will take (unless you start kicking out people out your home). Have anything for an emergency in case you ran out of food and your guests are a little at the expectation of something to eat.

5 Comments:

Anonymous said...

As far as i can see you have a very good level in english, it must be a very hard job to write 2 blogs in two different langauges. Greetings

Anonymous said...

Rodrigo:
Me encanta tu blog, tus comentarios y tus intervenciones en los foros. Te auguro un futuro muy prometedor a ti y a tu esposa en tu nueva aventura en Australia.
Tambien escribes muy , pero que muy bien ingles. solamente, te voy a dar un "tip" para que empieces a practicar. Los australianos no usan "z" en la mayoria de las palabras (p.e.: organisation). Es ampliamente conocido que se pueden usar las dos formas de spelling, pero en el fondo les parece mal. Hay cierta actitud "despectiva" a el uso de la "z" por que es el "American way".
So.... a empezar a practicar!
Saludos

Rod said...

Jair patete, thank you for your comments and in fact, it is kind of difficult ordering ideas. At last I find a way to separate both english and spanish thinking.
Again, thank you for your comment.

--
Anonymous,
gracias por tu comentario, de verdad es algo que no me esperaba entre el "american way" y "aussie way".. Si puedes me podrías proveer de alguna fuente donde pueda revisar dicho "estilo" australiano donde pueda ver normas de escritura?

Muchas gracias de antemano.

Anonymous said...

Hey Rodrigo!
Me encantaria poder decirte que hay una link on the net, con todos los casos en donde el ingles australiano es diferente al americano... o como decimos aca: el idioma ingles..y el ingles americano ja ja ja.
Hay un monton de casos donde el spelling es diferente: "color" is "colour", "center" es "centre" (de edificios grandes) "favored" es "favoured", "flavor" es "flavour", "favorite" es "favourite"...y otro que no te va a gustar: "neighbor es "neighbour"!
Hay miles de ejemplos que ahora no me vienen a la cabeza. Si de verdad quieres dedicarle tiempo a aprender acerca de esto, haz un simple ejercicio: Vete a cualquier periodico australiano (p.ejem. SMH.com.au) copia todo el texto del articulo y pegalo en una pagina de word, que tenga el diccionario en "american english"...ahi vas a verlas toditas!!!...Cuando las busques en el diccionario, revisa si tienen el (Brit.........), ese es el nuestro!
No te preocupes, nos acostumbramos a todo y en no time vas a saberte el spelling "australian style"... y tu español va a ser igualito al mio: spanglish!

Saludos
tuquequina

Rod said...

Hola Tuquequina... gracias por esos comentarios :P realmente es bueno comenzar a empaparme con todos esos comentarios y observaciones... Cuando abri el foro desconocia la escritura del vecino en Aussie... De todas formas lo vi como algo positivo así como la mezcla americana y aussie :P

De todas formas lo voy a tener presente para la próxima. Gracias :D

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