So Totally ME

Okay, so you know the day when you get one year older to your death? The day commonly called your birthday, the day when you are supposed to be pampered and made pretty and given presents? Let's narrow it down, shall we: the day when you should be able to sleep more than four hours? Well if you can't imagine where I am going to, let me tell you:
We were in a Leadership trip to Villeta, a small town like three hours away from where I live. My birthday just happened to fall on that Saturday, a good thing if you compare it to having to spend it at somebody else's party... or, thinking about it, not.
So, on my wonderful fifteen-year birthday (a quinceañera thing, it's a big deal here in Colombia) I was woken up at six by a not-so-soft punch by my friend who then said 'It's your birthday!'-like I didn't know?! (But I still love her)- And told me to go outside. I went out and saw my sister trying to light a brownie and a candle on it, unsuccessfully since she was standing right under a big fan. Oh my wonderfully smart, but dim, sister! Well anyways, she gave me a beautiful charm bracelet which was surprisingly made by my P.E. teacher, actually the surprising part was that it was really pretty- the bracelet not the teacher! Then we got ready and went down to have breakfast, where my friend announced it was my birthday and I got extra grapes, grapes that she should later on steal from me. Then we went to a kind of good-morning/get-ready-for-a-torturous-day! meeting, where there was really a surprise party and everyone had gotten presents for me, or that's what I would have liked. Instead, I went in and a bunch of people who I didn't actually know, or knew that they knew it was my birthday, congratulated me. It was very cool actually.

I went through the rest of the day normally, gossiping and getting birthday calls when I was in the middle of climbing a water fall- cell phone signal actually is everywhere! We did a very adventurous activity which was climbing the Cascadas del Mico, which are seven waterfalls one after the other. In one of them there was a cliff we could jump off and I consider it my own birthday present that I jumped of it. I am terrified of heights but I told myself that if I could do this then I could do anything. When I first got up there I closed my eyes and told my legs: 'Jump!' But they did not obey, they laterally just stood there shaking, they wouldn't move! I had to sit back down to calm myself, and after one person passed I stood up again. I said 'Go, jump! You don't want to stand up here while everyone is looking at you and there are people waiting behind you and freeze and look like a total spaz!' Well I guess my legs got the wrong message, because that's just what they did. I had to sit down and let someone pass, again! The third time that I stood up there looking at the water beneath me (which wasn't all that far down, actually) and, like Nike recommends, just did it. It was the scariest thing I've down until now, and my legs were still shaking fifteen minutes later, but I did it! *Hip Hip Hurrahs for me*

Then we went on to walk for a thousand years and then got to a place where you make panela- a very Colombian candy which I wasn't a very big fan of before but which I never want to even see again after that day. We had to make products from this, with our own two, very clean hands. Needless to say, it was a total disaster. There were bees all over, a lot of them stuck t the candy which we so unknowingly eat, three drunken workers to 'help' sixty kids, one of them who was extremely drunk and giving us some of his poison (I didn't have any, really!) and the panela was acid and so could not be worked with. We finally went out of there after what felt like a threefold of years, everyone tired, dirty, and of course, me with a giant brown spot of sticky panela in the crotch of my white shorts.

We were all looking forward to getting back to the hotel and going to sleep- something I should have done two hours ago- but our guides had the wonderful idea to take us out to dinner that night. It was very, very fun because we ended up being hyper in that way than you act so stupid you act drunk but you're actually not. In the bus ride back everyone was trying to sleep and shushing us every two minutes because we were being non-boring and talking with the guides, one of the effects of the 'hyperiousity'.

When we finally got back the effect had worn off and all I wanted was to lay down. But only then did the surprise party take place. My wonderfully smart, but doubly dim sister had organized a party for me and a boy who had had his birthday the day before! I love, I do, but I wanted to hit her at that moment even if it was one of the sweetest things ever. Now, here comes the best part of the day: I finally got to sleep at 11 at night while I was one year closer to my death!

All in all, it was a great day. However, not a very normal way to spend your birthday.
But who wants normal when you can be... ME?!