Birthday Weekend: Day 1

So never in my life have I had a birthday that lasted three days. I even said specifically to my friends here: No, I don't want to make a big deal out of my birthday. I would say they ignored my request.

Thursday the 28th was culture day! It was the day I fasted, and we had the university-wide iftar that night. As you will see, it was a recurring theme of the weekend that I was either not paying attention to what was going on around me, or was just extremely naive. Anyway, Student Affairs left during the day to go get a present and flowers for me, and then they marched into my office and started singing. I noticed neither that they were gone, nor Lily yelling to Gloria: We're gonna do it in five minutes!! Five minutes later, I was very confused when Gloria came marching into my office. So nice of them...


My flowers, my new stuffed camel "Oasis McSpits," and a belly dancing music CD!













Lily, me, Dave, Gloria, and Oasis












This next part has nothing to do with my birthday, but one of the Indian students invited us to go to a dance festival that night. Traditionally it is the harvest festival. His mother let me borrow some beautiful clothes. Karen and I had so much fun trying to copy the Ghidrathi dances.

It's much smaller so its hard to see, but my dress is awesome, it was purple with gold thread woven through it, and his mom even gave me jewelry to go with it!






Stay tuned for days 2 and 3, as soon as I collect the pictures from everyone that has them!