This month was John’s turn to host his counterparts from other missions for a luncheon, and he really did it in style! Everyone enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving lunch at the breathtaking Bosch Palace – many of his fellow management officers from Spain, France, Belgium, England, Ireland, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Italy, the European Union, Germany, Norway, Austria, and Sweden said they had never had traditional Thanksgiving food before and really got a kick out of it! And John got special kudos for hand-carrying cranberry sauce back with him from our last trip to Arkansas!
We were also happy to see our old friends Becky and Suzette this week – John and Suzette were at Hendrix together. They came for dinner at our apartment on Thursday and we met them at La Paroloccia last night – they’ve been on a Chile-Argentina vacation and we were delighted they made time to see us!
I walked through Recoleta Cemetery last Monday after lunch out with John at La Dorita — I went in 1996 when John and I were here, but hadn’t been back since then, despite it being a 10-minute walk from our apartment. It’s so pretty, although these days it’s chock full of tourists (like me!) – even so, it’s so big that I was able to find spaces with no one around. While many of the mausoleums are well-maintained, many of them are in a state of disrepair. The cemetery itself could use better maintenance. They’re charging tourists around $15 to enter – and there were probably 100 there when I went – yet the walkways are in disrepair, there was trash on the ground, etc. Regardless, it’s a beautiful, haunting place.
The weather was perfect this week – I sat outside with girlfriends one day to eat lunch, and the next day we walked across the street to take a stroll around a small lake in the park and walk through the beautiful rose garden.
John and I finished watching “Ripley” and it was so good. The best thing about it was the photography – it was shot in black and white and every frame was just gorgeous. Great acting, too. We also enjoyed this week’s episode of “Shrinking” and we watched “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” – so cute! I’m reading “The Last Place on Earth,” about the race to the South Pole between Amundsen and Scott and it’s fascinating!
The jacarandas continue to show off this week – they’re fragrant, too!
