A Quarter of a Century Old

5th Grade Student: Miss Ashley, how old will you be on your birthday?
Me: 25
Student: Oh...so you should be getting married soon, then, right?

I should really keep a record of those priceless quotes...there are so many!  But as I said in my quote above, I finally hit the mark: a quarter of a century!  Aaahhh!  I had an awesome birthday on April 30 and the whole weekend surrounding it.  It just so happened that May 1 is a Peruvian holiday so I had a 5 day weekend for my birthday. 

First I got to celebrate with my Peruvian family and friends.  We made pizza, ate "cake" (which was actually a lemon merengue pie, per my request), and played Pictionary (in Spanish, of course).  In Peru the tradition is that the birthday person's face gets smashed into their cake, and that's exactly what happened.  But here's the thing about merengue...it gets hard.  So even after smashing my face into the sugary-sweet whipped egg pie, there was not so much as a dent in the merengue nor a speck of food particle on my face.  My face just bounced right out!  And yes, then we did proceed to eat it...haha!  I don't have any good pictures of the face-smashing (it happened so quickly, they're all too blurry), but here are some other pictures of the evening.  (You can click on the photos to view them larger.)

This is me with Jimmy and Raquel Sisley, the couple from my church who has taken me in and who I visit in their home usually 2 or 3 times a week. They're such a blessing!

These are my awesome Peruvian friends that I spend most of my time with.  The back row, starting from the left: Caleb, Walter, Melanie (Sisleys' daughter), and Dick.  In the front: Carina, me, Luz, Guillermo (Sisleys' son).

Cutting my "cake".  Mmmmmm.... We had to make fun of Dick for this, because he is very much a Pucallpan, jungle guy.  He didn't like the pie because it was too sweet, but yet he eats worms!  You can't eat pie, but you can eat worms?!?!

 

On my actual birthday, the other teachers and I had planned to go with a missionary family on a river trip by boat down to one of the indigenous jungle villages for the day, since none of us had had the opportunity to do that yet.  But then we decided to change our plans when we learned that a man in a boat near that village had been assaulted and killed a few days before we planned to go.  So instead we boated through the Canyo, which goes from one lake (Cashibo) to another (Yarina) and then out to the Ucayali River, which is one of the three rivers that joins to form the Amazon.  It kind of reminded me of a small hiking trail cut out in the woods, except our trail was made of water and in certain places only wide enough for the boat to just fit through.  The vegetation you see coming up out of the water is called wama.  It's an annoyingly fast growing plant that grows so thick in rainy season (which we have just come out of) that you would think there is solid land underneath it, but there's not.  That's how boats are able to "cut trails" through it, simply by paddling through.  Below are some pictures I took from the boat.  In the last picture, the small structure you'll see is actually a shelter for crops when they're harvested.  Right now the water is still so high from rainy season, everything is flooded.  I would have more amazing pictures if my camera battery hadn't died 30 minutes into the trip...I'll try to plan a little better next time. 

Then, to top of the awesome birthday weekend, I came home to this:

"What exactly is that?" you might be wondering.  Why, it's a "laser" (a.k.a. yarn) maze preventing me from getting to my bedroom, of course!  A birthday gift from Reef, one of the 1st grade students who lives on the base.  Miss Stephanie (my roommate and fellow teacher) suggested decorating the hall with streamers, but Reef decided this would be cooler...he was so right!

And this lovely picture below, is another special something I came home to: home-made chocolate peanutbutter cups, compliments of Stephanie!  Such a good roommate and friend :)  They treat me well around here, for sure.

Well, thanks for checking out my blog!  I'll be sure to keep you updated on anything else that's going on.  May is going to be a very busy month with the winding down and wrapping up of the school-year and preparing to head home for the summer.  At least one more blog to come before I can hopefully see you in person.  Love you all!  God bless!