Invitations and milk

Here is Michael sporting his Father Christmas look.



We have been preparing for Michael's first birthday party, buying plastic plates and balloons, a piñata and having invitations printed. The last was made extra complicated by the people in the printers being idiots. They took our order and said it would be ready the next day. We decided to have a little invitation with a photo of Michael on the front, unfortunately we hadn't brought a nice portrait of Michael with us to the shop so we had to make do with the recent photos we happened to have in Rocio's camera phone. The best of them of him with short hair was a bit blue, which I pointed out to them and they said would be OK. I knew you couldn't really improve the colour as I had already tried on the computer.
Returning the next day we found they had done nothing and they asked us to come back again 30 mins later. We went back a couple of hour later and they had still done nothing so we waited in the shop for them to do it. One of the staff decided I was Rocio's spokesperson and throughout the time I was trying to talk to the man on the computer about the picture she continually hit my arm and repeated in Spanish "Does she want a stool? She can sit here. Does she want to sit down?" etc. I refuse to insult Rocio by talking for her so I ignored the persistent woman.They then told us "The picture is too blue" we will try to fix it.
Here's Mr Blue you might recognise him from the Facebook icon.


Despite telling them several times not to bother they spent 15 mins or so failing to fix it before letting me give them another better (although hairy) picture of Michael. This turned out fine and they recruited the other customers waiting in the shop to help fold and glue our cards. Michael helped out with the big piñata mallet we had just bought.



This is all standard customer care here in Peru.
The best bit about it all was when we had finished they put one of Michael's invitations on the wall as a model.



The other event this week was Rocio's "Vaso de Leche" club, or glass of milk club, a government funded system of local groups supporting mothers. They get together every week and try to help each other and a few times a year ( I think ) the government gives out free milk in tins. Here they are sitting on the grass where the meetings are always held. Usually this works out fine. I don't know what happens when it rains.