Feliz Cumpleaños in Peru

I recently celebrated my birthday here in Peru, my first time celebrating it abroad. Actually it wasn’t quite as homesick as it sounds though fortunately. I definitely missed my family and everyone back home, but a bunch of my friends here made it really fun.

At work I definitely felt appreciated. As is custom in our office, everyone I work with came up to me and personally told me happy birthday and shook my hand at some point throughout the day. According to another work tradition, they all took me out to eat during lunch at a nice restaurant. We went to a rotisserie chicken (pollo a la brasa in Spanish) place in the mall nearby. This is really common food here, I should have taken a picture. It’s basically a quarter of a chicken, plus fries and a couple different Peruvian style sauces. Ají is the most famous, a spicy yellow, green, or red sauce usually made from fresh peppers. Also there is some sort of green sauce with a more garlic type flavor, and a white cool tasting sauce that is really good. They made the restaurant people sing me happy birthday and give me a desert with a candle too, even though that part might just embarrass me… Worth it for the desert though.

Oh and back at the office, a coworker insisted that I call my parents right that instant so that they didn’t worry about me on my birthday. He lent me his iPhone so I could log in to Skype, and I took a break to give them all a call.

Then later that night I got to go out to eat again with the other interns and AIESECers! A ton of people wound up coming, much more than I expected, and I was very grateful. They took me to Chili’s, which normally I would be against because I want to eat all the Peruvian food I can here and not stuff I can get back in the US, but actually Chili’s was exactly what I needed. Once I saw the menu I realized how much I had missed American food. The menu was almost the same as the US menu (with a little bit more white rice of course). I ordered ribs, which I love in the US, and it tasted almost the same and I loved it. It also came with yellow corn like we have in the US, which was amazing after eating so much of the giant white corn they have here. They even gave me a bunch of presents that I wasn’t expecting at all. And of course they had to sing me happy birthday again at the end (one more desert).

By the way, I have to explain the happy birthday song in Peru. It starts out like the American version in English but with a Peruvian accent, a slightly different tune, and no “dear [birthday person]” part. Then it repeats again in Spanish while clapping to the beat, and I believe the words are “Cumpleaños feliz, deseamos a ti.” It took me a few birthdays at the office to figure it out.

Lastly, AIESEC Pacifico here (the kids at the University of the Pacific taking care of me), gave me an awesome gift that they made for us trainees. It’s a video wishing me happy birthday, which I embedded below. Really cool gift, and they gave it to me in a DVD case and everything that they made. Overall it was an awesome birthday, especially considering my last 4 birthdays were spent 90% studying in the library at Michigan. And I still have at least one more present to open when I get back home in December, so I get to drag it out as well!