birth birth birth birth

muddy fingahs!!!!!
birthday partyyyyyy
mud cake and a mud heart!!
FELIZ CUMPLEANOS JILI SORPRESA
me and igor on the kitchen floor
douglas, the great chicken wrangler.
thankfully the toy is covering his business this time


11 March 2010
Hey, chochachos! If my writing seems more sage and geriatric today, that is because ya’ll are accustomed to reading the words of a 23-year-old, and this chochacha is now 24. So, please attribute any sudden leaps in wisdom and/or insight to my advancing age and the gifts—and burdens, yes, there are burdens as well—that come with it.

As the Hondurans say, I was “a little baby once again” this past Tuesday, March 9th. My second birthday in Honduras, this time fortunately bereft of extremely tiny panties, which were given to me in great numbers last year by various individuals. I woke up early because I had to get out to a village (Alto de las Mesas) to start a Colgate project with the school there, in which the kiddies brush their teeth with hopeless abandon every day after snack-time and receive weekly lectures regarding oral hygiene and the toothly sciences. This week, the lecture was just on how to brush your teeth correctly, though, which was nice and easy. Unfortunately, it meant brushing my teeth six times in 30 minutes, as I chose to do a demonstration with each grade, even though it’s a one-room school with one teacher for the whole lot (60 kids total). Let’s face it; I just love brushing my teeth. It’s so awesome. Anyway, I stayed the whole day, and clamored down the mountain (to get to the school from the dirt road, you have to walk up a mega-steep dusty narrow path that edges along the rim of a steep mountain, banked by corn and sugar cane plants) with the teacher, Maricela (who is also in my English class). As we approached the main road, we heard a truck coming (free jalon!) so I started to race down the hill like a dang goat, which was stupid because goat I am not. About 8 feet from the road, in plain site of the driver of the truck and several people standing around outside a house, I totally ate it and slid down face-first, my skirt all sliding around to suggestive leg-levels and my glasses all goin’ askew. I wasn’t hurt, except for a skinned leg and arm, but jesus in a juice box was I embarrassed. Everyone rushed over and was hella concerned, tryin’ to clean me up…meanwhile I’m covered in red dirt and laughing like crazy. Awesome. The driver of the truck did give us a jalon back to Alubarén, though, so that was rad. Then I went home for a quick shower and lunch before my 4pm English class. As I approached my house, the neighbor kids came streaming out yelling my name like they always do, trying to drag me into their house to see the surprise they had for me. Unfortunately, I had to pry their feeble little baby hands off my skirt and make them wait until that evening, because I was all kinds of rushin’.

Off I dashed to English class, where I told my class of teachers that I had prepared a special surprise for them, in honor of my birthday. Murmurs of joy spread throughout the class, which were abruptly extinguished when, cackling madly, I whipped out the manila envelope filled with pre-tests they all had to take (which I should have given to them on Day 1, whoopsies). The test was hellsa chunkity, like 5 pages, so I just sat and dangled my legs from the desk while they grumbled their way through it. As they finished about 50 minutes later, they wandered outside and waited on the little soccer-playin’-concrete-slab (or so I though). When the last teacher handed me her test, I stepped outside to call the others in, only to find them GONE. I was like AW HELL NO YOU CHEATIN’ DESERTERS and such, full of Anger, until I saw one of them heading back into the school with a huge bottle of soda in her arms. Yay! Birthday Soda! I ducked back in so she wouldn’t see that I saw her coming, and busied myself writing on the board while they whispered and giggled outside. Suddenly, all 15 of them burst back into the room, grinning like little kids, bearing a little sugary-bread thing they’d bought at the pulperia and covered with 24 matches. They began to sing “Happy Birthday” (in English!) and took pictures of me with their camera phones while I blew out the “candles.” Then they doused me with bags of water (it’s typical to attack the birthday girl or boy with eggs and other crap, so I guess I got off lucky), handed out bags of chips and lolly-pops and cups of soda, and we participated in the great age-old tradition of forfeiting school time for consuming delicious treats. By the time we finished it was 5:30, so I just let everyone go home half an hour early. I walked up the road to my house, where Alison, Noel, Douglas, Cristina, and Yesica were waiting for me. They made me close my eyes and lead me through the house into the backyard, before finally arriving at the base of a big orange tree. “SORPRESA!!” they all screamed, and I opened my eyes to find a succulent mud birthday cake waiting for me at the base of the tree, complete with 24 little sticks, masquerading as candles. They’d also made a giant mud heart with my name inside, and with cinders from the fire had carefully written “FELIZ CUMPLEANOS JILI SORPRESA!!” on the concrete. Then they made me sit down and each presented me with a little hand-made envelope, covering in drawings, with sweet little birthday letters inside. My eyeballs, they did sweat a little, I must say…those kids have a vice grip on my soul. Then we trooped inside and made chocolate-banana smoothies, like we did last year, and sliced open a big juicy watermelon. My landlords gave me a huge sleeveless muscle-tee that I can never wear in public, with a picture of a Honduran beach on the front. Maybe I’ll wear it to baseball practice one day and freak out off the adolescent boys. Tina gave me an apple and a chocolate bar, and Lisbeth gave me a pencil, an eraser, a pencil sharpener, and a pen (her pencil case seems to have gone on a diet recently, I wonder why that might be?). But the best was that mud cake, which is now dry and sitting on a paper plate on my shelf in my room. Though I will admit I snuck a tiny bite before I put it up for display…god, those kids know how to mix dirt and water. Like imported Swiss fudge on ‘roids.

That’s about it for the Birthday Special…baseball is goin’ great, my little misfits are having a wonderful time, and getting excited for our up-coming scrimmage in Reitoca on the 27th of this month. Colgate, Joven a Joven and TEAM are all cominn’ along beautifully, and I’m gettin’ ready to start a Nature Club in the school. Finally, I get to start the pinecone-art sweatshop I’ve always dreamed of (though pinecones don’t exist in Alubarén, I have a huge bag of them I collected when I lived in Santa Rita).

My bed just texted me “haylz come on man it’s so l8t, come put on yr shortz and loser mouth-guard and get yr slumberz on”…so I guess I’d better go.
Looooove
Hayley

P.S. Birthday Update: I got a sweet ride to Tegus on Friday afternoon and met up with some friends, who treated me to surprise party with cold beers and an incredible smorgesborge of fancy cakes (chocolate caramel, cheesecake with raspberries, and carrot cake ) and ice cream. And they sang so beautifully!! You guys is the best.