(Pics: 1st, Bday dinner on the patio. 2nd & 3rd, Celebrating at Trotamundos Cafe. 4th & 5th, The cuy experience.)May 17, 2009...
I had a wonderful 26th birthday. I was with Anke and Susie, of course. It began with dinner Saturday night. Susie made pasta and bruschetta and we ate on the patio with candles and wine and chatted about our memories of 19, 20, and 21 and how old we’re getting when we’re really not, but we kind of are because we’ll be 30 before we know it considering how quickly the last four years have flown by, but then again 30 isn’t really that old so, at 26, we’re still okay. Phew. At about 10-ish we went to the usual place, Inka Team, to ring in my bday at midnight. When the clock struck 12:00, the girls disappeared to the DJ booth, where they made an announcement, “Alanna, we love you! Happy birthday!” and then the DJ played a birthday song while I danced and pranced to the music with my friends and a little Peruvian club-full of strangers singing along. We stayed out dancing ‘til 6:00 a.m. It was splendiferous. The next day, we did our usual Sunday brunch, barely awake, and then slept all day. I went with the girls to eat dinner at Pachapapa, and then to Trotamundos Cafe for cake, where I made glorious use of the Birthday in a Box Tashi and Manz sent in my birthday care package from home☺ (Thank you, girls!) It was so fun. The people in the café must have thought we were nutty. Us three silly girls, blowing up balloons, lighting candles, sprinkling confetti everywhere, disrupting the quiet cafe atmosphere with our birthday noise-makers and fits of laughter.
It is customary here to commemorate the passage of another year of life by eating cuy (cooked guinea pig). But since it is generally served at lunch--and on my actual birthday I slept through lunch--we went to eat cuy later in the week. I hadn't tried it yet. Frightening...cuy is literally a cooked rodent on a plate. You could pat its head, count its teeth, give it a kiss, shake its paw. You can see the horrified expression it was making just before it was skewered. It's disturbing, really. Getting past the fact that it should have a coat of fur, and little black eyes behind those empty slits, and should be in a cage, running on a wheel, is not worth the taste. Not. Worth. The. Taste. Ehem, in my humble opinion, anyway. An experience, nonetheless.
So I'm 26. Twenty-six...I've heard, though, that you are as young or as old as you feel.
I feel fantastic.
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