How to celebrate a Birthday in La Paz...

Sunday February 12th a few friends got together to celebrate a fellow volunteer's Birthday (Left to right, you have Maria-Elena, Alvaro, Cesar, Fatima, Oscar, Paola the Birthday Girl, me, Andres, Claudia M and Cindy). It was a surprise, as I got Paola to come over with the pretext of going over First Aid stuff (hehe), and although most people arrived after Paola the Birthday Girl (oops), she definitely did not suspect anything - it worked!

Once everyone arrived, we did the dual Birthday song (here they first sing in English and then in Spanish, clapping the base beat and accelerating during the Spanish version for added intensity) and Paola blew out the candle. Then - and this is my favourite part - Paola had to act according to tradition and bite the cake for good luck... which of course turned into Paola getting a facial! Teehee. Here's an action shot of her biting the cake. The two arms you see (one on the left with a blue band and another behind Paola's head - whose owners will remain unnamed) are the tools which turned part of the cake into a cream mask. For the record, the part of the cake which remained unaffected was cut - after Paola got all the cake cleaned out of her eyes and off her face - providing wish number two and distributed. Tastey! At least Paola got two wishes (one blowing out the candle, and one cutting the first slice of cake with the knife upside down) and a chunk of luck for her year!

Right before we left the apartment at the end of the party, the view from the window was so stunning that a picture had to be taken - TADAH! Turns out the golden light, rainbow and dark clouds combo was a precursor to an insane hailstorm which lasted about 15min (followed by a night of rain which caused a lot of damages around the city - more about that later) during which my brother and I, sitting in a cab on our way to Zona Sur for dinner, felt like sardines in a can - an interesting experience to say the least.