Birthday Week! (A Belated Entry)

I am pretty disappointed in myself for not having posted last week, after the most incredible and legitimate BIRTHDAY WEEK of my life! It's been crazy busy here, as always, which leaves very little time for social media ;).

Starting from where I left off, last week's theme was definitely love and appreciation...and cake. I visited my four different communities and was showered with surprise birthday festivities in all of them.

On Tuesday, I was totally surprised by a birthday cake/dance party in El Jocote with Josh, Brandon, Yunior, Denis, and other community members. They were super sneaky--despite various obvious hints they gave my by accident, I didn't notice a thing!

On Wednesday, something similar occured in La Lagunita with Sara, Lynn, and our friends in the community-- despite having already been surprised, I was not expecting a second celebration. It was just as awesome!! We danced in Sara's host family's fiesta attire.

On Thursday, the night before my birthday, I spent the night in Agua Fria with Camille, Brenna, and Kenzie. They had been scheming with our friend, Nora, and she woke us up at 5 in the morning to the loudest, cheesiest Latin American birthday music imaginable. (Blast this at the highest level through your speakers and you'll probably get about half the sound we experienced that morning...!) We crawled back in bed to savor our final moments before the sun came up, and Nora got us out of bed again at 6:15 for a "birthday surprise!" So, at the buttcrack of dawn on July 29th, we each cut ourselves a thick slice of Nica-cake and happily consumed it for Birthday Breakfast.

Later that night, I was surprised in an entirely different way when my volunteers poured talcum powder all over by body, apparently a Nicaraguan birthday tradition (I felt lucky though--it was better than raw egg, in my opinion, which I have seen done for birthdays here!). So...that happened...and then I took a lovely bucket shower in the dark.

When I came back to staff house on Saturday, we had an awesome taco dinner, another cake (not complaining ;) ) and an awesome piñata-- with UVA colors!!

In conclusion, I don't know if I have ever felt so loved. Most exciting and eventful birthday week ever! And...I swear I will update with more legitimate project-related stuff tomorrow--there's lots of it!