Hearing about all my friends who were abroad getting ready to go back to Virginia and see their families and all our friends from back home was finally making me feel real homesickness, which I am usually pretty immune to. The fact that I was also actually sick for a while was making me feel kind of down. But this week, the week of my birthday, has renewed my excitement about being here in Peru and reinforced how grateful I am for all of the people who I’ve met here and make my life wonderful.
First off, my birthday itself, el 20 de Mayo. My totally amazing compañera de casa, Julia, had decorated our bathroom door with little posters and candy and left birthday messages for me, so I already started off the day feeling special. The sun was shining, which was a nice gift, because it’s been gray skies constantly in Lima (possibly another reason for my mood up until then). I was in a really happy mood just walking around and doing normal everyday Peru stuff. I went to my Visual Arts class at la Católica which ended at 7pm then took a combi home. When I got home all the lights were off Chela (my Peruvian host mom) opened the door. All of a sudden, the lights came on and there were balloons everywhere and everyone jumped out with “Surprise!” Wow. I had no idea. There was music and food: tiny chicken salad sandwiches (which are the traditional food to serve on birthdays in Peru) and also pizza, chips, soda, drinks and Chinese. They had made me a paper crown and sash, a huge card signed by all of them, 2 homemade carrot cakes (and Paco brought a chocolate cake later) and there were even little gifts like anime DVDs because I confessed to liking anime. It was so overwhelming and really touching. I blew out a candles on my cake (a 2 and a Princess Jasmine as the 1) but I purposefully didn’t wish for anything because my birthday was already everything I could have wanted and I have the best friends in the world – what more could I need?
Now for last night, the party night! We had decided to wait until Friday to go out to dinner because I was still having stomach problems earlier in the week. We picked a sushi restaurant called Edo in Miraflores and got dressed up for the evening. We had a yummy sushi dinner there, sampling each other’s rolls. I also ordered a Passionfruit Martini, which was delicious (ironically, I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol on my actual 21st birthday so I decided it was high time to celebrate). After dinner we went to our favorite hangout spot in Miraflores – Café Beirut, where they always have 2 for 1 drink specials on delicious daiquiris and other alcoholic beverages. That night they also had a couple of belly dancers performing in the restaurant which was entertaining and got me excited to go dancing later. Of course the dancers gravitated to the two gringo-ist looking guys of the group to shake their stuff at– Kevin and Kurt. After a relaxing drink there we caught cabs to San Borja to go to the discoteca Onuba.
Onuba was inside of a shopping mall, where there was also a small bowling alley and a movie theater. Apparently it’s pretty normal to have discotecas inside shopping areas – I guess the idea is to centralize all of the commercial activity. At Onuba we met up with Rosa, and also some fun CIEE kids: Tommy, Delphine and Kaitlyn. There was a line to get in but we were on the list, so Julia and I asked one of the security guards what we should do if we were on the list and he asked us how many of us there were and then preceded to just let us in without checking our names or anything and we skipped the line. Everywhere we went we just kept saying we were on the list and that it was my birthday, so they just gave us all VIP wristbands for some reason. Sometimes it pays to be foreign.
The club’s atmosphere was really cool and the DJ was great. It was a good mix of the Peruvian songs you always hear out at discotecas (that I am falling in love with and sort of learning the choruses to) and good American music that we knew (for example, Usher). There was one central bar where ladies drank free until 1am and there were two bars in VIP sections which were elevated around the edges of the club. Over the dance floor were flashing lights and a net full of long, different colored balloons that were let free to fall down on everyone at some point in the night. We picked a booth in the corner of one of the VIP sections as our base camp but also were all out on the dance floor for the majority of the night. It was sooo much fun dancing and being with my friends, Julia and I didn’t get home until 4:30am. BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!
