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| Wicked awesome poster Avriel and Madelon made! |
Yep,
that’s right! Yesterday was my 22nd birthday, and I gotta say, it
was certainly one of my best. I’ve never been a huge birthday person, which I
mentioned to fellow volunteers Avriel and Madelon…however, it seems they took
it as a challenge to make sure that all 200+ people on sight knew it was my
birthday weekend and wished me a happy birthday. Haha, I guess they were right
that birthdays are meant to be celebrated.
Late
Saturday afternoon, I started to get a little suspicious that something was up.
All of a sudden I wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near the Santa Ana House. My
girls kept me quite occupied far far away from there. They all of a sudden all
needed to chat and wanted to take walks down to the baseball field and back with
me. Once, I started to head towards the park and they were like “No, Kristen,
not for the house, not for the house.” It was pretty adorable!
So
eventually I’m allowed to go to the house for supper and the door was closed,
which is unusual. I knocked and opened the door to a completely dark house and
then all of a sudden, the lights came on and all my girls plus my tia, Madelon,
Avriel, and a couple other kids screamed ‘Surprise’…even though I knew
something was up, I was pretty shocked! The house was decorated and there was a
table full of cards from the kids! As I was reading them, they put gold stars
all over my head and stuck flowers from the front yard in my hair. Then we
had supper and afterwards, a couple of the girls took me outside. Little did I
realize that I was about to get drenched! It’s a Dominican tradition to pour a
bucket of water on the birthday person (I’m pretty sure it was more like 5
buckets!) Next, my tia was telling me to come back inside to cut the cake (even
though I was all wet…go tia for allowing the house to get a little dirty!). The
girls sang to me and counted to 22 while I was making a birthday wish in my
head.
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| Right as I walked in and they surprised me! |
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| Reading the cards they all wrote... |
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| More bday wishes! |
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| With Belkis after the water got dumped on me (the first time!) |
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| Cutting the cake (while soaking wet!) |
After
those festivities, I headed back to the volunteer house and a bunch of us
headed to the batey to get in some dancing. That was lots of fun too! At
midnight, they put on a Feliz Cumpleaños bachata and again, I was sung to.
Sunday was also great…it was just a nice, relaxing Sunday at NPH. It happened
to be the July birthday party for the kids, which went quite well. Then we just
had music in the park and there was ice cream for everyone (as tends to happen
on Sundays…yes, we have an ice cream maker on site!)
Overall,
I was very touched by how kind and thoughtful everyone was...from the kids to the tias to the
volunteers. And as it turns out, I share a birthday with one of the nuns
on site and one of the girls in the baby house, so that was fun too!
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| The triplet americanas/my besties Avriel and Madelon! |
In other news, the rest of the week prior to the weekend was
pretty much spent in bed except for one horrible day spent in a clinic in San
Pedro. But, I am happy to report that I have now fully recovered and knocked those
parasites out of my system. Monday was also one of my girls’ birthdays...Jacqueline turned 13! We made things work out so that we could do Proyecto
Familiar with her and her sister that night. So Selenia (the volunteer from
Italy who I am sharing my house with this summer), Jacqueline, Anita (her
younger sister) and I made pizza and then a cake which we shared with the house
of girls afterwards. It was quite fun!
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| Jacqueline! |
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| Jacqueline and Anita prepping the pizza! |
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| Selenia and me (notice the matching outfits...aww yeah!) |
T-6 days until the Mages sisters invade the República
Dominicana. CAN. NOT. WAIT. :)
