I remember thinking one of the neatest inventions was a cd alarm clock my friend had in college. This nifty device could be programmed to play any song that you happened to have on cd to wake you up in the morning. While it wasn’t quite the same being that I couldn’t choose the song or alarm time, 2 weeks ago I was awakened to a lightly strumming guitar and a small chorus of Molinas singing ‘Que los cumplas feliz, que los cumplas feliz, que el Señor te bendiga, y te haga feliz!!!’ followed by hugs, congratulations, a big birthday sign and a brightly colored gift bag.
In case you don’t know the tune in Spanish, yesterday was my birthday and the Molinas were not going to let me forget it. After the sunrise serenade my day was sprinkled with birthday wishes from the family, friends, church members and any person that dropped by the house. After a specially prepared lunch that was made according to their direct probing of what food I liked best, María spent most of the afternoon preparing for the barbeque like ‘asado’ dinner meal while I taught classes which each informally started with the students singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ In one of the classes I was actually given presents by the majority of the students!

The climax of the day came when I returned home from teaching my class to a good 20 guests boisterously singing that all familiar tune followed by a train of people each presenting me with a gift (I should mention here that the dinner party was a joint party between me and my host sister who had her birthday 2 days earlier). We spent the rest of the night chatting over a huge dinner and was sung a grand finale ‘Happy Birthday’ before we cut the cake. A few days before this I was talking to my mom and before hanging up she told me to enjoy this day and make it memorable because it could be the only birthday I ever have in South America. I can say I took her advice and enjoyed my day but with such a personal celebration who wouldn’t?!?