How to Celebrate a Birthday in Peru

First I must ask you to please watch Jim Gaffigan´s Cake sketch at http://youtu.be/-o-u4IwXkbE if you have never seen it. It´s hilarious and you´ll understand better. Yesterday was the birthday of my host dad, Ivan. Now I´ve celebrated relative´s birthdays with them, but never actually a member of the immediate family. I didn´t realize how much more there is than what I´ve experienced. I will now proceed to give a step by step process of how to celebrate a birthday in peru. It´s a big day, so be prepared.

Step1- Make the cakes the night before:
I caught my host mom staying up late making three different types of cake, little did I know when we would be eating them.

Step 2- Cake for breakfast:
At 6:30 in the morning I wake up to the sound of about 15 peruvians singing Feliz Cumpleanos. My first thought: Hope it´s chocolate for me. I get dressed and go downstairs, thinking that they were just singing over eggs or something. I sit down at the table and am served two huge pieces of cake. Cake for breakfast. That´s interesting. Looks like I´m not taking a shower today, I´ll be digesting these carbs for hours. I felt quite sick afterwards, when Milagros serves me the last piece of cake because she didn´t want to save it. There is no stopping this woman with feeding me. It´s like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or something. It´s always ¨sirvate!¨, which translates into EAT SOMETHING! I practically rolled around the hospital for the rest of the day. I was tempted to use one of the wheelchairs lying around. One of my German intern friends asked me what the matter was. I turned to her and said, ¨Cake for breakfast¨. She laughed and said she had eaten cake for breakfast for a week after a birthday in her family. I couldn´t believe it. I don´t know how these people digest with this kind of diet. I think I´m getting scurvy. If I end up in the hospital, you´ll know why. Luckily, there were a lot of people there, so we finished the cakes. Oh I forgot to mention, not only do they have cake for breakfast, but they drink too. I can´t imagine drinking at all, let alone 6:30 in the morning. Next to the cakes were a couple of bottles of Pisco, which is Cusco´s famous alcoholic beverage. At least they didn´t decide to combine the two and make rum cake.

Step 3- Massive Lunch:
This was my favorite part of the day because I had the best food I´ve eaten yet. Once again a bunch of family came over for lunch. We had peruvian pasta, roasted chicken, and these stuffed peppers full of meat and vegetables. It was SO good! Milagros bought Sprite for me because she knows I don´t drink. They had some sort of cocktail. Everytime someone finds out I don´t drink, it´s like the end of the world. WHAT?!? You don´t drink alcohol! It always ends up the topic of conversation at dinners with the entire family. It´s always, you don´t even drink a little? But Jesus drank wine. But you´re missing out on so much. Ha. That´s quite funny now because of what happened later. Anyways, after lunch we ate more cake. Definitely took a siesta after that one, and definitely had to eat a slice of that cake for breakfast this morning.

Step 4- Drink the Night Away:
After lunch I asked Milagros if there was anymore celebrations later. She told me that there was a little party later with some of Ivan´s friends, but it would just be drinking so I probably wouldn´t enjoy it. While they started their party downstairs, I decided to watch a movie in English. It was really nice to snuggle up in a blanket and sit on the couch. Around 11:00 I went to bed as usual. While I was laying there in bed I realized that the party downstairs was getting louder and louder. They were getting really drunk. Thank goodness I can fall asleep fast because it might have taken a long time. It was a rough night to say the least. I woke up several times to their laughing or yelling. At one point I woke up to the song ¨Eye of the Tiger¨. My first thought: since when was I sleeping in the library? (At midnight the library at BYU plays the same music for closing time, Eye of the Tiger is one of the songs) I looked at my watch and it was 5:30! I could not believe it, they were still awake and probably drinking. This time I knew I wouldn´t be able to go back to sleep as easily because the music was so loud. Then after about 10 mins I hear this pounding on the door. They continued to knock until the party heard them 3 mins later. I´m pretty sure it was a neighbor because they thank goodness turned the music way down. I woke up this morning and stepped out of my room. The whole house except my room reeked of alcohol. Luckily they only drink on birthdays.