Enough about my philosophy on aging - time to discuss the 4.0 celebrating adventure...
(We've all done a lot of hill climbing while here this month.)
Being born in Japan makes my birth a bit unique - as I clearly don't look the part (people initially think I'm joking when I state where I was born). To honour my birth location, we usually celebrate with sushi - it's also a way to make my birthday different than Arden's earlier in the month (because going to the same restaurant or having the same 'favourite family meal with the same old cake' in a two week span is BORING).
When I figured out that we'd be in Atitlan for the big '40', I resigned myself to a sushi-less party as it's a small town with a lot less than our previous location of Antigua. Thanks to Google, I learned that there is a (mostly) well-reviewed Japanese restaurant called Alalla run by a Japanese lady named Seiko. Even more interesting...every 15th of the month there is a sushi buffet with live music (a couple of days off of my birthday date - but hey! I'm flexible when it comes to live music with my food). A sushi party was again something to anticipate - after we went searching to for the proverbial 'hole in the wall' location and confirmed with a waiter and musician from Argentina that the live music and food was going to be incredible on the noche de sushi.
We arrived in plenty of time to pick our own seating location in the relaxed atmosphere of roaming dogs, uneven rocks and tree roots, and corrugated tin or tarps covering a good portion of the table area. There were bamboo and bamboo paneled walls. Plank-boards with pillows on cement cinder blocks sufficed for seating. A few Adirondack chairs were clustered around a small table. The location was unique to any other place I've been... We focused on the fact that we had a place to sit, the music would be fun...and sushi was ahead.
The biggest pot of miso soup that I've ever seen was brought out. Yum!
Heaping plates of sushi were served - filled with cooked shrimp, fried eggs, ham and cheese (my kids thought they were the best!), canned tuna, vegetarian, or cooked shittake mushrooms. All were tasty (and I was thankful for the cooked options for all items).
Jasmine tea was included.
Dessert was a tasty fruit salad with a cream and mint sauce, brownies or New York cheesecake...these plates kept on emptying at an alarming rate (I think Maelle may have said something about 7 brownies being a good number in a night and that she was curious why I didn't eat my age in brownies).
The music started off with a couple from...CANADA!!!! Their first song was about...SASKATCHEWAN!!!!! While chatting with them while on stage (the atmosphere was quite relaxed), we discovered that they'll be at Cypress Hills Provincial Park on July 2nd for a concert at the amphitheatre. We will be too! They had a song about pumpkin pie...which made us all miss our pumpkin patch at home.
A group of ladies and one man from around the lake played incredible Cuban-style music on guitars, a flute, a clarinet and variety of drums and percussion items. We enjoyed the multi-ethnicity of this group with Japanese, Argentinian, American and Guatemalan participants.
Finally, we stayed for a song (or two...we couldn't tell when they started or ended) of a musical group with a style that I would classify as ultra-new-age, meditation or from the Indian sub-continent. There was a sitar, an African harp, a didgeridoo, drums, a thumb piano, and a pan flute. The words the lady sang were not in English or Spanish. It was relaxed though because she meditated on stage for 10 minutes while the instruments were tuned. My kids heard many of the instruments we saw at the MIM (Musican Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona) several years ago. They are able mimic her hand movements and swaying with some accuracy. This style of music is well suited to the type of people who hang around in San Marcos.
In the end, the atmosphere, music and food all worked together to make a great celebration.
We've eaten close to 40 green avocado and lime pies over the past months in Central America...YUM!!!!! We will miss the many ways of eating avocados when we get home to $3 (mostly good) avocados...
On my 'actual' birthday, my kids helped Arden make a coconut chocolate cake and we had an eggplant tomato sauce with pasta that we've been perfecting here in Atitlan. And we had a tasty meal at a local restaurant in Tzuna with colourful cloth table clothes, a hummingbird coming to eat from the hanging flowers and a boy who can get lost in electronics.
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