Just a Normal Birthday

Yesterday was a day of unremarkable joy. That sounds weird, but those are the two words that best describe it - unremarkable in that it was a normal day, and joyful because it was so delightfully normal. I had no surprise party and no suffering through entertaining masses of people I don't really know and don't want to superficially interact with. I hate Salvadoran parties because people come for the food, basically ignore the hosts, awkwardly stand on the sidelines judging everyone, and leave a disgusting mess of trash afterwards. I love that my host family is on the same page and a birthday is just a normal day for me to do with as I choose. Now I’m 24. It doesn’t feel very different. I still struggle with forcing myself to work when I’m on the computer rather than check facebook, watch Mindy or look up food recipes that I clearly can’t make in the campo. I still have weird unexplained stomachaches, have a few extra pounds, and have no desire to change the facts. I still live in El Sal for a quarter year and look forward to the last months with my community and huge changes and opportunities in the future. 

Walking out to the road to meet up with my friend, I couldn’t stop grinning. It wasn’t anything special, just the joy of being back in my site with my host family and pets, walking through recently plowed fields surrounded by trees bursting with leaves and earth covered in short grass hopefully stretching towards the sun and drinking in the recent rainfall. The time right before rainy season starts in earnest is one of my favorites because after so much yellow dust and bare trees every bit of green and shade is a delight to the eyes, but it’s not wet enough yet that all of the paths turn to mud and everything starts to smell musty and moldy. 

The dogs rolled in the dirt and splashed through the shallow river. I adore those dogs and their endless unwavering devotion. Paprika stayed by my side for four days straight when I came back from Nicaragua. I’m sure I helped by basically not leaving the house - I’ve been gone from the community view so long, why break the trend now? I’d get up for more water and her head would peek out from under the bed, her eyes following my trajectory to ensure my speedy return to the hammock. During every meal she takes up her customary place asleep behind my chair, patiently waiting her turn for leftover tortillas and dog food soaked in coffee. I have a ridiculously Salvadoran dog - she loves coffee and tortillas and ripe jocotes. Though I love the jocotes too, I’m more of a good veggies followed by cookies and ice cream kinda girl (I’m sure she would love that too, but I never have any leftovers of that for her to try). We make a good pair because she happily gobbles up what I leave on my plate so I never have to deal with awkward cultural exchanges when I can’t finish my food and the host feels slighted. It makes sense that the culture is to eat everything in front of you because so many live with too little to eat, but sometimes I just can’t eat a bucketful of soup with a side of half a chicken.

I started the blog on my 21^st birthday after a huge cake, piñatas and a lovely evening with people I love at the Tamarindo. Now, three years later, not much has changed. I spent the day at home with my friend and my host family just chatting, transferring TV shows and movies across hard drives, having tickle wars and taking pictures. I thought my host sisters were getting ready to go out to a party as they threw on high heels, straightened their hair and carefully applied makeup, but when I asked they looked a little guilty and said, “It’s for the pictures.” Well, damn. I didn’t realize that a birthday warranted a senior photos style photo shoot, but they were going all out. I changed out of my shorts and t-shirt in record speed and we held awkward photo silence for a few seconds at a time between bouts of laughter at our antics. Photo silence is so weird because the photo is supposed to be capturing the moment and everyone is in suspended animation while the photographer gets set and what it’s actually capturing is that awkward silence when no one knows whether they can talk again for fear of being caught with their mouth open or their eyes averted. In between silences is what you actually remember, not the photo moment itself. This is especially true in El Sal, because everyone is dead set against smiling in photos, which I don't understand. Don't you want to more accurately reflect what's actually happening?

In a happy turn of events, this year the cake was replaced by homemade cupcakes. We made chocolate with peanut butter frosting and coffee with chocolate frosting. I need a different recipe or at least significantly less flour and lemon instead of lime to make buttermilk for the chocolate cupcakes, but the coffee ones were just the right consistency. They could have done with a tablespoon or two more instant coffee, but everyone knows that cupcakes are just a vehicle for frosting anyway. I can make frosting, but sometimes you just want to indulge in American pleasures. So I did. We mixed peanut butter into Betty Crocker vanilla frosting and it was just perfect. I regret nothing. 

Also, my sister wrote about me, which is nice for posterity's sake because nothing disappears on the internet, but I also really liked her rant about the uselessness of Latin. I think that blog is basically just for me to enjoy her writing and to think about fascinating and funny scifi/fantasy stories from her Friday fiction shorts. She has some characters that I totally want to meet, and I didn't realize until a couple of days ago that I probably bring her up too often in the context of wanting her to become a famous author. Now that almost all of my fellow PCVs roll their eyes when I talk about my sister and her learning languages or going to study abroad or writing, I may talk about her a little too much. This desire for her to become successful is mostly selfish because I want to read about her characters and definitely want her to become friends with authors (who are generally just awesome people) and get invited to things like BookCon and GeekyCon, because what's better than Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson), Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling), BJ Novak (@bjnovak), Rainbow Rowell (@rainbowrowell), Brandon Stanton (@humansofny), John Green (@johngreen) and so many others all in the same place surrounded by other book lovers? Nothing. That's what. Of course this means she would also invite me and get me a rockstar pass because that's what sisters do.