That means "Happy Birthday to Me!"
On April 16th, at my school for kids with special needs (called "Superar" meaning "to exceed"), the teachers and my little kids threw me a small birthday party. I made them a kosher-for-passover cake out of a mix Mom sent me (my favorite) so that I could eat some and I brought the kids some cookies. They made me a poster with a guitar on it and all their hand prints in paint. The teachers also gave me a winter hat with the colors of the Ecuadorian flag (yellow, red and blue) that said "Ecuador: Mi Pais" (Ecuador my country) and a colorful knitted scarf.
On April 17th, I spent the day hanging out with my host family mostly at home. They made me a wonderful lunch and got me a delicious cake - Maracuyá flavored. It's my favorite fruit here (amongst many incredible fruits). They also invited my host brother, Martín, and his girlfriend, Male, and another family friend over to eat with us. I am a huge fan of Martín and Male so that was great.
One of the Ecuadorian birthday traditions is that after you blow your candle(s) out, you have to take a bit of the right out of the cake (i.e. without fork, spoon, knife, or hands). They chant "¡Te muerde el pastel!" ("Bite the cake!") until you do it, and then while you're taking a bite, they push your face into the cake. It's a great tradition. Anyways, that happened to me with three of four birthday cakes I ended up getting (I didn't get frosting-faced at the school because the cake wasn't very big and we needed to share with all the little ones).
The reason I had two more cakes was because Polly (Passover family girl) is one day younger than me, so we had two parties (Friday and Saturday) to celebrate our birthdays together. On my birthday night, everyone dressed up really ridiculous (i.e. I wore a yellow rubber raincoat, yellow rubber rain paints, and yellow rubber rain boots... and sunglasses) and we celebrated at one of the host family's houses.
Saturday night we all dressed up fancy and celebrated at another host family's house and then went out afterwards to Gringolandia (Gringoland) where there a bunch of restaurant and bars. 'Twas a good weekend. It was interesting to celebrate turning 21 in a country where the drinking age is 18.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario