Feliz Cumpleanos

Last weekend, I visited a Deanna, a peace corp friend, for her birthday. It was really nice to be able to share and compare experiences. Her family is very nice, but with that comes overwhelming. Like my host mom, hers likes to talk about how alone she is. Like my host mom, her kids are usually only a few rooms away.

Deanna lives in the Bolivar province which is famous for its cheese and chocolate. I am both extremely jealous and relieved. The cheese and chocolate there is amazing. I brought back chocolate for my host family and accidentally ate most of it myself.

On Saturday for Deanna´s birthday the family through a party. They made two cakes for her. One they made her plant her face in. Making people smash their faces in their birthday cakes is a tradition here that I personally think is great, at least on other people´s birthday. After the cake we played various games including one similar to hot potato. We were passing around a balloon and if the music stopped when you had the balloon then you had to make a fool of yourself. For example, when the music stopped on me, I had to do the chicken dance. It is pretty funny and most of the time I feel like a fool anyhow so I didn´t mind when the music stopped on me. I have noticed that a lot of games here are focused on having a loser, not a winner. After hot potato we played a card game. The point of the game was to get rid of all of your cards. The game wasn´t over until all but one person had gotten ride of their cards.

On Sunday, one of the surrounding communities had a ceremony for the virgin starting at 6 or 7 in the morning. People from all over go to this ceremony and Deanna´s family and a lot of the community walked to it starting at midnight. They walked from midnight until six am. Deanna and I were going to go, but at about 11 we realized we were too exhausted. We went to bed when the family left. They did not get back to their house until 11 in the afternoon. I can´t imagine how exhausted I would have been if I had gone.