Rachel's birthday party qualifies as a Chile Moment. She's turing four, so our house rule is that she gets to invite four friends. The problem is that she has five friends. They are all little girls from different aspects of her life here in Santiago: two American friends have parents that work with Mark and me, two Australian friends are from our church, and one Uruguayan girl is from the preschool. An international birthday party for a four-year-old! I thought it would be a great idea.

Well the problem turned out to be that while all the girls speak and understand Spanish, Rachel and most of the friends prefer English. The poor little Uruguayan girl wanted to play with them, but Rachel was giving the rules of all her games in English. So the little girl and Rachel took turns for the entire party running outside and crying by themselves. The lifesaver was that the little girl's mom stayed the whole party. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a clue how to manage the whole thing.

Funny, though, after everyone left and we were cleaning up, I asked Rachel if she had a good time. "Oh YES, Mommy! I had ALL my friends here!" It's a good thing kids forget easily!