Twenty

March 9, 2016

                Yesterday was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. Somehow the SMs and other staff always find a way to make birthdays here super fun and special. We’ve continually found ways on every staff birthday to make something that you wouldn’t think you can get in our small town of Bolivia such as lasagna, brownies, biscuits and gravy, grits, coffee cake, and Papa John’s pizza (Miguel got that one in Santa Cruz.) Anyways, I shall now proceed to describe my birthday.

                Normal morning for the most part. Woke up at 5:26 am, had house worship, staff worship, a tiny bit of free time, breakfast, and then went to teach class. During all of these things, people so kindly told me happy birthday which was always very nice. Class actually went really well! This semester has been crazy because my 6 students are all crazy, but yesterday was pretty decent.

                Now here at Familia Feliz we have this tradition that if it’s your birthday, you get thrown in the river. I didn’t know when I would get thrown in, but I had a feeling it would be sometime during lunch. I go to lunch, get my food, and sit down at my table with the girls. Very soon after sitting down, everyone begins singing happy birthday and I turn around to see none other than Candace and Kevin carrying 2 cookie cakes to me. Cookie cake? COOKIE CAKE! Oh my goodness I had told Candace the other day all about how in my family we always eat cookie cake for our birthdays, never normal cake. I told her how much I missed cookie cake and how it would be so cool to be able to have one here in Bolivia but how that is impossible. SHE MADE ME COOKIE CAKE. I love Candace so much. And not only did they make me cookie cake, they used frosting on top to make a Pikachu because they all know how much I love Pokémon.

In all of the excitement of singing and seeing the cakes I was grabbed by some of the older boys to get carried to the river. There is no point in fighting it; I know I’m going to get thrown in the river one way or another. So yeah, they threw me in which is whatever (if you would like to see me getting thrown in you can find a video Jonatan posted on my Facebook) and as I am emerging from the water to walk back to the big house for my cookie cake I see a ton of people standing there. I thought wow there are a lot of people here. I guess everyone just wanted to see my reaction about getting thrown in. Wait no that doesn’t make sense.. And then the moment I realized what was about to happen was a moment too late. I had completely forgotten that for staff birthdays right after getting thrown in the river you get pelted with eggs and flour. So yeah, that happened. I got killed with that stuff, all up in my hair. It was over Sean.

I walk back to the big house with many children and staff laughing at my flour and egg covered head and go straight for my cookie cake. It. Was. So. Good. All of the staff had at least one piece and loved it. As I am eating my piece I ask Dani what we are going to do for our afternoon class that we have every day together and she tells me not to come, happy birthday! So sweet. I had no objections. And that actually worked out really well because it took ages to get all of that flour out of my hair.

I was thinking it would be kind of nice to skip work hour because it was my birthday, but I decided against it and went to work hour as normal at 3:00. My group basically just went around campus for a while and grabbed the giant palm leaves that fall off of the trees and put them in a huge pile to burn, nothing too terrible. At this point I was pretty much thinking that my birthday celebration was over, but as soon as I went to dinner I knew that it wasn’t. Candace, Kevin, Darian, Andrew, and Dani all weren’t at dinner. So that is definitely not normal and definitely meant that they were in Miguel’s house making me something which was super exciting to me. I purposely only got a little bit of the vegan Mac N’ Cheese knowing that there was something else for me later and went to my table. I decided to ask Keila (one of my older girls) where Candace was. “She is walking in the woods.” Oh really? “Keila, why is Teacher Candace walking through the woods?” “To get better respiration.” Oh, okay thanks. I’m sure that is what Teacher Candace is doing. Yeah, I knew something was up.

I go back to my house and begin journaling about the day as one of my girls pops into my doorway and tells me to stay in my room. Aw! My girls had been planning a little surprise thing for me for a while now, so I pretended like I didn’t know what was going on and agreed to stay in my room. They finally tell me to come into the living room which they had decorated with little colorful paper chains, candles, and a beautiful little bouquet of flowers. The girls and Candace had baked another cake for our house! And Keila had baked bread and chopped up tomato and cucumber for little sandwiches. It was so fun and sweet and I know they also all enjoyed it a lot because they all had permission to miss the first 30 minutes of study hall.

Around 7:00 Darian shows up at my house pretending she needs to pee and also asks if we’re doing our new game night that we’ve been having every Tuesday night of this semester. (The two staff members that are in charge of study hall on Tuesday night are Jonatan and Mariluz, so we Americans have been doing game night during that time.) Candace and I both say yes of course we’re having game night and we tell all of the girls to go to study hall so we can head over to Miguel’s. I grab Taboo and we start walking over. During our walk over to Miguel’s, Darian randomly blindfolds me, which was absolutely hilarious. For the rest of the walk we all just kept cracking up about how awkward and hilarious it is that I definitely know Darian is the one who blindfolded me and how hilarious it was when Darian blindfolded Candace on her birthday. She said it’s her favorite thing to do.

I am then guided into Miguel’s house and told to sit. The Taboo game is taken out of my hands and then they take my blindfold off. I am surrounded by the other SMs and Miguel who then place an Oreo milkshake and a bowl of French Fries in my hands. We have the best group of people in the world here at Familia Feliz! I love them so much. Everyone tells me happy birthday once again as they also grab milkshakes and continue making more fries. And it’s still not over yet! Miguel tells me that he has a gift for me, walks into his room, and comes out holding a box of Cookies and Cream Poptarts. Holy cow these people know me so well. (By the way, it’s definitely not possible to get Poptarts in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, but you can get them in the very far away city of Santa Cruz which we’ve only been to when flying to and from America.) They tell me that I need to share the Poptarts though and I open up the box to find.. Not Poptarts? There are a thing of candles for weight and then letters and cards from each staff member to me. SO SWEET! And then as I am thanking them all for the cards Kevin weirdly hands me a pack of Poptarts. And then Andrew. And then Dani. And then Darian. Oh haha, so they did actually buy me Poptarts, just trying to mess with me.

So next I basically got one of the greatest gifts ever. There is this Youtuber, Miranda Sings, that my roommate Candace and I love and watch together when we can. And rather than making me a card like everyone else, Candace dressed up like Miranda Sings and made a happy birthday video for me on my IPad. Candace wanted me to watch it alone because it’s embarrassing, but we’re all a family here so we all watched it and died laughing together. After Candace’s Miranda video we played Taboo for the last 30 minutes that we had before the kids were done with study hall. It was super fun and Candace and I won (we make a great team) and that’s how my birthday went! I am so very blessed to be surrounded by all of these amazing people out here in the jungle. Don’t get me wrong, I really do miss my family and friends in the states, but I’m definitely happy to have my SM family by my side.