Anniversary of birth, not necessarily just one day

My what a wonderful week that was! I was certainly celebrating my own aging quite a lot the days before and weeks after, my birthday. Six or seven cakes, big candles, fireworks and mountain hikes here we come!It all started Saturday the 9th, though that is not my birthday and it was not my birthday party; it was a self-thrown birthday party for Jesse, a volunteer in the next town over who had invited pretty much all PCVs in the area for a whole day of activities: Mayan ceremony on the roof between rainstorms, followed by street-food dinner, followed by cake, followed by a themed dance-party in his house, with a hired DJ. He maintains he was sharing the birthday party with me, which I appreciated.The next morning I took two new volunteers (site-mates) on a hike with my ex-host brothers (16 and 8, such fun company) up to the highest peak around, back in the communal forest. We got soaked in the cats-n-dogs downpour on the way back down, stopped in at my old house for a breather (which, you’ll recall, is halfway down the mountain) where we dried out a bit and were fed Toto’s version of apple pie: seasonal peaches and cherries “en dulce” meaning cooked in sweet sauce, like peach syrup. Yum. We then hiked the rest of the way down back into town (thanks to a lack of cars to hitch-hike on a Sunday) to another site-mate’s house, where they were waiting for us to all make lunch together, have a few drinks, eat the cake they made, etc. Nice day. A friend and I went walking around town that afternoon, since for some reason a small contingent of Feria-type stands were clustered in the streets (do the Catholics here celebrate the Feast of Saint Benedict, for some reason?). We ate some churros, and then I was invited to a piece of cake at a local cafe since I wasn’t going to be around the actual day of my birthday. It’s apparently a bigger deal here to celebrate it on the actual day; rescheduling and rain checks just make people feel cheated out of the fun!The next morning – the big day! a quarter-century! – I was up early in my room packing for my trip, and Doña Emiliana, my landlady/housemate/hostmom knocks and wonders if I have a minute, and a lighter. Um… yes, I guess, on both counts. This being about 6:15 am on a Monday. She has a big candle. Like, the size of a chair leg. She lights it, and invites me to kneel with her on a rug in the middle of the expansive main room as she prays that the Lord bless me, protect me, and that he receive her thanks and the thanks of many others for having put me in their lives, that I continue to be successful in my endeavors, that I not feel sad for not having my real family with me because I have so many family members now here, etc etc. I tried not to cry, but failed a little. It was such a beautiful expression of her friendship and love for me.I then received a phone call in the early morn: Las Mañanitas, the typical birthday morning song! “Estas son las mañanitas que cantaba el Rey David… a las muchachas bonitas, te las cantamos aquí!” I’m just surprised it wasn’t at 5a.m. which is the normal time to wake someone up with this birthday ditty!Shortly thereafter my friend Andrea came by, a little early for when we were supposed to meet on the corner to go running together, because she had a big birthday card in her hands she had made the night before, and a big smile on her face too. We went running, the first time she had been on a run in 6 months, and the first time in Toto, so I was showing her one of my favorite routes through a quiet little outlying suburb of town (although quiet little suburb does NOT mean the same thing here as it would in the states…). When we arrived back, Doña Emiliana invited us into the kitchen for a quick breakfast together, and wouldn’t you know there was cake!! I think that brings the total to three now…But I had to leave, get on a bus for four hours and go to the Peace Corps Center, but upon arriving in the town I bought a big cake myself at a store, and then arriving at the Center, quickly went to everybody’s offices, the lunch lounge, the local restaurant etc. where all the staff were to share cake with them. I then hustled on a bus to Antigua to meet up with the Common Hope social worker, and we were off out to the town where my folks’ new “godchild” lives, whom we met in December for the first time, when they all came to visit. She and I share a birthday; she turned 15 and I, 25, so we had planned for me to go visit, bring her books as a birthday present, and translate a letter for her from my parents. It’s usually a little awkward with a family who’s Spanish isn’t great, and the girl is so shy she’s not one for conversation, but I’m so used to that docility and having to make conversation at this point, that I didn’t find it awkward at all; rather, we discussed things like differences in words in Kaqchikel (their language) vs. K’iche’ (Toto and other neighboring province’s language, which I know some of). She liked the books quite a bit, even if her mom saw little practicality in them.I then went back through Antigua to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, my old training town, to Patty’s house, my best (Guatemalan) friend. She, her family and I made a mile-high veggie pizza for dinner, and they set off fireworks unexpectedly in the patio, which almost gave me a heart attack, and then we ate one of the two cakes that had mistakenly been bought for the occasion! So, you keeping track of how many cakes that makes?I left super-early the Tuesday morning that followed, to get all the way back out to the highlands to one of the towns near the Lago de Atitlán, where my Peace Corps program director (APCD Flavio) and a couple of us volunteers were to give a teacher training on environmental education. It went till midday, then we all went out for lunch with our APCD afterwards (followed by a desert that, thankfully, wasn’t cake!), and he gave me a ride all the way back to my house, which is in itself enough of a gift, considering the two hours on 3 buses it would’ve otherwise implied!Whereupon I found flowers in my room and a big “Feliz Cumpleaños” on the wall of my room; and the preparations for a big dinner ensued, which I was totally unaware of. The guest list? Doña Emiliana, her sister and their family, Doña Emiliana’s daughter and her family, and some of my close friends that Doña Emiliana knows well enough to have invited. The agenda? A small speech or “Palabras” (“words”) given by almost everyone, about me. The menu? Steak and mashed potatoes, followed by peaches and cherries en dulce, followed by… one of the two identical cakes that had accidentally been bought by two people who failed to coordinate for the occasion. The 20-month-old baby asked where the piñata was :) I think I’m too old, that must be why no one got one for me… that was the only thing missing, after all.So this was Tuesday… and Thursday of the same week is my former host-brother’s birthday, the one who escorted us up the mountain the previous Sunday. So what did I do? Took a cake up the mountain for birthday dinner at my old host family’s house. Duh! But wouldn´t you know, they wouldn’t let me offer to contribute anything else to the meal, which they normally do, so I suspected that this birthday dinner was not going to be entirely and singularly for José Arnulfo. Sure enough, they insisted on singing Happy Birthday to me too! And there was another cake… oh dear. But I must say, I do love staying the night there every once in a while. It still feels like home though I haven’t lived there in a year, and it always makes for quite lovely running the next morning of my familiar haunts on the trails in the communal forest.Perhaps a week later, I was down in one of the “suburbs” of Toto for lunch visiting some new friends I was getting to know. They had found out through some offhand comment of mine (probably about how my schedule had been busy due to so many engagements, and how running more was becoming a necessity due to so much cake intake) that I had recently had a birthday… so what was there after lunch? You guessed it – my 11th birthday cake. Appropriate, don’t you think, for a birthday on the 11th of the month!So how’s that for a birthday odyssey? Whew!! I’ll be lucky if any of my pants fit me next week! Which is hardly the point, since in my opinion birthdays were made for cavalier cake and ice cream consumption. Seems I REALLY got my birthday wish this year!