As my 23rd birthday slowly approached I tried my hardest to make sure no one would know, dreading the idea of celebrating more holidays abroad. However, my newspaper youth group somehow found out and it turned out to be a great surprise and a great birthday to remember. Let´s just say no matter how old you turn you can always be a kid at heart.
I never would have expected the youth to plan a surprise birthday party for me. It was definitely a complete shock. After our Sunday youth radio show I was walking with some of the youth and the youth were in awkward silence trying to signal something to each other without me catching on. My suspicion caught on. Then one of the youth finally broke, and said ¨ok I don’t know how to lie to get you to go to Ian´s house, so we are throwing you a surprise party lets go there and act surprised, act so surprised that you could like fake fainting.¨ I didn’t faint, but I was definitely surprised and the best part is my first ever surprise birthday party was planned by my 10-15 year old youth group members, really cute. They´d planned it at Ian´s place and had decorated the place with confetti and balloons, Ian made a cookie cake and one of the youth brought a vanilla cake.
It´s funny cause sometimes working with youth here can drive you crazy, sometimes they are just all over the place and no matter what you do they just won´t come through with their parts. But when it comes to something like this they actually planned, coordinated, communicated between themselves¸ all things we try so hard to get them to do for the newspaper. It just takes a party to get those skills to shine.
The party tuned out great and it was a wonderful birthday. And I got a really cute picture frame that I´m going to put an AREvista group photo in and a scented candle. For a while we had some awkward silence, so I decided time to pull out those famous youth and family´s volunteer dinamÃca games! Ian and I grabbed a broom put on some beach boy music and taught the kids how to do the limbo. I will say there was a major height advantage, those little kids could do it some much easier than Ian and I who fell by the third round each time. Then, we played hot potato but with the balloons. The rule was if you got stuck with the balloon you had to then pop it without using your hands. The kids had a blast.
When it came time for cake as I was going to blow out the candles, the morditas chants started. I knew where this was going. I remember quite vividly from birthdays in Mexico that the birthday person has to literally take a bite out of their cake before they can start cutting it, only as they go to take that little bite of the cake someone pushed their head into it. I tried to stick to my ¨I refuse to morder, bite, my cake cause that´ll ruin it¨ but the kids wouldn’t hear it. So I finally gave in and leaned in to take that bite, knowing my fate was doomed, I was soon to land up with my face in that cake. And did they get me. Three hands soon swooped in to push my face into the cake and let’s just say I was still blowing my nose to get cake out of my nostrils an hour later. Today not only marks one year older, but also one year since I left for Miami pre-staging for the Peace Corps, can´t believe a year has gone by, time really does fly.
Quote from Motorcycle Diaries that I just watched (by the way if you haven’t watched it you should)
Let the world change you, and you can change the world./ Deja que el mundo te cambie y tu podras cambiar el mundo.
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