Last night at grupo, Josue's dad spoke to us on character in his very "Carlos Gerstein" way. He is a rough 45 year old señor who mumbles out dry jokes which are humorous when I can catch them.
He has the same looks and mannerisms as the Godfather (especially when he lets his moustache grow out) and there is actually a facebook album dedicated to this fact ("Carlos Gerstein es El Padrino").
He spoke to us on character, asked us a lot of tough questions, connected what he had to say with Jesus, and ended by saying, "Look, you are at the age where you are young and everyone thinks you are a rebel' he paused, thought for a second, then added, "tambien, pe' " which is a slangish way of saying "well, me too."
After this, the grupo surprised me by bringing out two cakes and singing happy birthday to me in English (sounded so absolutely awful I laughed all the way through), Spanish (also sounded awful), and a different version of Spanish (pretty bad).
Then they asked me to give a speech. So I did. Here it is:
"Thank you all so much for the cake and the songs you sang so pretty-ly.
I am so thankful to God for your friendship and that here I can have a familia poquito ... I mean familia pequeño ... pequeñA. That's how you say it. Familia pequena."
They laughed at all my mistakes and then we shared around the cake.
As soon as I got my piece, Claudia and Maria chased me around for a while so that they could throw cake in my face. Which, since Bethany left, has become a tradition. Below is a photo of Bethany starting the tradition on her birthday:
They finally caught me. Christian and Claudia finally shoved it on. But I got sweet revenge by using what was on my face to share with them.
Peru is a wonderful place to celebrate your birthday. Peruvian friends of all ages felt the need to come up to me and hug me, then give a little flourishy speeches about how great I am.
Others gave me chocolate.
My roomates took me to Barranco for my birthday where they bought me dinner - very sweet. Afterwards, we went to the Metro Supermarket – when my cashier rang up my metro bonus card, she got this really warm smile on her face and had someone bring me a present in the obvious shape of a wine bottle.
5 comments:
Hooray! I'm glad you had a good year-completion. :-)
I really hope you got a photo as flattering as that taken of you... PLEASE!!
No such luck - we don't have you as our documenter anymore, so no one had a camera.
Eden! I finally grabbed a chance to read your blog! It sounds like your B-day went well. I miss keeping up with you through email and phone. Congrats on no longer being a first-year teacher!
The Godfather, awesome. And I love this part: "Others gave me chocolate." Nice. And wow, you got a present at the store--I wish they did that here! I'd go shopping all over on my b-day! Happy Belated Birthday Eden, thanks for your blog, it is awesome :) .
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