Fiesta de Sorpresa

Last month, I celebrated my second birthday in El Salvador. I admit, I was a little sad that day because no one in our office wished me "Felíz Cumpleaños." I had assumed our coworkers just hadn´t known us long enough to remember our birthday dates.

In fact, one coworker greeted me on my birthday in this way.

Coworker: "Buenos días, Amber. ¿Estás muy cansada?" (Good morning, Amber. Are you really tired?)

Me: "¿No, por qué me haces esta pregunta?" (No, why do you ask?)

Coworker: "Porque tienes ojeras abajo de los ojos." (Because you have dark circles under your eyes.)

Great. Nice to see you too. This is one of the harder things to adapt to about Salvadoran culture. Nine times out of ten, the culture is super polite -- much more so than American. No one will walk into a public office, for example, unless they have been given the go ahead from an employee (¡Pase adelante!). Other times, people that we work with can be so shy in asking me a minor favor that I would have no shyness in asking of them.

But then, when it comes to appearance, it is a different story. Like many Latin American countries, it is perfectly normal here to tell someone that they look like they have gained weight. Or...that you have dark circles under your eyes. When John and I returned from Nicaragua last week, the gossip in the office was that someone said that I had returned from the trip looking "muy delgada" (very thin). None of these comments are meant to be derrogatory. It is just a cultural difference that takes some getting used to.

So anyway, on my birthday, I was a little sad to be away from the family and friends that know my birthday and help me to celebrate it. John and I had plans to have a birthday dinner with an American retiree that lives in our city. We get together each month to share gourmet dinners and english conversation. But when we arrived at the house, I quickly learned that John, our American friend, and our roommate had organized a surprise birthday (fiesta de sorpresa) instead. There in the house were all of the people with whom we share our lives with here, everyone who pretended to not know my birthday date all day long. "¡Mentirosos!," I jokingly accused them all of being. (Liars!)

What followed was probably the most memorable birthday I will have in a long time. We celebrated with lots of food and, of course, a piñata. It was also my first birthday party completely in spanish, and hopefully not the last.