22 years old, baby!

Wicked awesome poster Avriel and Madelon made!

Yep, that’s right! Yesterday was my 22^nd 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.

Right as I walked in and they surprised me!

Reading the cards they all wrote...

More bday wishes!

With Belkis after the water got dumped on me (the first time!)

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!

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!