Happy Birthday Me!

My 24th birthday was on Monday. It was thoroughly celebrated on 2 different days with 4 different cakes and 7 choruses of Happy Birthday.

On Saturday we had a small gathering at our house with some local friends. Fabio, the French volunteer in Ocongate, came down for the weekend. And Babbi and Mari and their children came as well. We had sourcream chocolate chip cake (a Driscoll-Hill family favorite) and played a lot of Spot It.

On my actual birthday, Lauren cooked up the last of the cinnamon roll dough left over from Easter. At school Hermana Rosario had the entire student body sing to me during the weekly meeting. At 11:00 I went over to the parish where there was singing and cake. Then I went back to the school for 2 cakes to celebrate all the teachers who had birthdays in January-April. In the evening we had mass at Hermana Rosario's house. She made a delicious meal and we had a pretty good chocolate with passion fruit frosting cake.*

I looked at last year's birthday post to see what reflections I had:

I remember my birthday in Peru two years ago. It was a hard birthday. I was too focused on what I didn't have, on how far I was from home. This year I saw clearly all that I have here. I'm cared about by many people here. There is much to celebrate, not just my continued non-death, but my full life.

This I feel the same, but "ever so much more so."  This year I have friends who have known me for awhile. This year I know what I'm doing. This year I've got my feet under me almost all the time. Monday I completed the only "life year"** I'll spend entirely in a foreign country (probably). It's been a year of challenge, joy, frustration, growth, and so much love.

Thanks to everyone who makes this life such a wonderful one to live.

Best cake award goes to Lauren for bringing me the taste of home with the sourcream chocolate-chip cake with chocolate glaze.

Best rendition of "Happy Birthday" goes to 5°A who made so much noise banging on their desks (or in a few cases lifting desks and banging them against the floor) that I was afraid my boss would walk by and send me back to Boston.

*Peruvian store bought cakes are generally terrible. I don't know if it's because they make the cakes too far ahead of time of if they just don't have good cake recipes in Peru. But most cakes are dry and flavorless. The tres leches cake at the parish and the chocolate cake at Hermana's are the two best store bought cakes I've had here.

**Here defined as one brithday to the next.