whats up people of our blogging community! so last friday on the 8th of june i was lucky enough to celebrate my 19 birthday here! also i was lucky enough to have the most wonderful best friend here to make sure it was amazing! So that morning i woke up to the familiar ballad of happy birthday and found my self waking up to all the girls in the house singing to me and nicole holding a plate of waffles, a beautifully cut kiwi, and a smear of ecuadorian peanut butter must say one of the best breakfasts ive ever had! i had an off for the morning so mostly just read and talked to cute jenni who also had an off with me. then for afternoon shift i went to my homeland cunas and fate finally brought me and nicole together for a shift ha after having a crazy dancing party with us and the kids were fed them and got them ready for bed. as i am changing one of the kids the worker, marta, got out her phone and started playing music which was a little strange but i didnt think anything of it then to my surprise the second song to come on was happy birthday and hermana jessica came in and started dancing with me and so i can officially say i danced with a nun and then marta gave me a piece of chocolate which was bomb by the way. as i am changing the last kid who was giving me quite the rough time and making sure i was sweating a little while changing him linnea who was working in the other casa came a grabbed me and whisked my away to the kitchen and as i am walking into the kitchen the lights were off and all the casa kids were staring at me and what do you know in the middle of the table a scoop of ice cream with seven candles burning bright was waiting for me. they sang me happy birthday, but in spanish of course, and hermana jessica had the biggest smile and all the kids were loving it so thanks to nicole and linnea i got danced with and sang to by a nun, two workers, and six ninos, quite the day at the orphanage! then we proceeded home and went out to tutto freddos (a restaurant in town) and weirdly the whole town came out to celebrate my birthday, as well as a corpus kristi which is a holiday celebrating sweets and stuff like that, but we went to dinner ate some dang good american ecuadorian food and then headed out into the party. so if nicole or i have not told you yet americans here are celebs so saying that everyone was staring at us like we were aliens is an understatement but its cool i enjoyed it as well as nicole. haha. as we were wandering they had some strange towers of wood looking material that was covered with paper and ish like that, that they said they light on fire and its really cool but unfortunately we did not see them actually light it on fire but i am sure it was pretty sweet! also we watched some strange street dance group that had quite the crowd around them but werent really doing anything beside dressed in womans clothing and fake fighting/dancing... definitely one of the weirder things ive seen here. then rising into the night sky we saw paper lanterns so we weaved our way through the crowd to where they were and some how nicole and i got to light one off which i am pretty confident to say was the most magical moment in both of our lives... and then we galloped off into the sunset... just kidding but it was a defining moment for my birthday! while we were setting off the lanterns some ecuadorian girls were next to us and had some sashes on so i am thinking they were royalty of something but they ended up pulling me and a couple other girls into a picture with them... pretty cool haha. there was music playing so we all were dancing and just having such a good time until we needed to head home so we caught a taxi and returned home. nicole still had one more surprise for me she made homemade peanut butter cups. needless to say they were super amazing and the perfect ending to a great day! dont know what i would do with out nicole because she made this birthday one of the best ever! love her to death! hope all of you are doing good and thanks for putting up with my joking manner of writing. love you all! <3 anna