A Birthday and Christmas in India

---

Today, I celebrated my 17th birthday in India!

This morning, I was woken by my host mother and host father with birthday wishes and gifts (a hand-made scarf from my host mother and a journal and a book from my host dad), and then I made scones with my host mother. The scones were devoured at school and we took our 6th (and final) exam of SYA India. After our exam, we went to lunch at Vihar, by Rushikonda Beach, and my Indian teachers presented me with a huge chocolate cake, photos, and other gifts for my birthday. I will be really sad to leave them, as they have been so kind and sweet to my friend and me. At lunch, we received our SYA yearbooks, DVDs, and heard our last speeches, and after lunch I went shopping for hours and hours all over Vizag with my three best SYA friends. After shopping, we all had dinner at my host family’s house of vegetarian manchuria, Chinese noodles, tomato and cucumber salad, and apple crisp while sharing our memories of the SYA experience over Christmas music. My family even has a Christmas tree, decorations, and lights! Probably the best part of this experience has been the relationships I’ve formed with my closest SYA friends and my host family, and I was so happy to spend time with all of them on my birthday. I can’t even imagine how difficult it will be to say goodbye, and we have all agreed to meet up in Boston or New York.

I know that my blog has been sparse for the last few weeks, but I have been so busy! The past week has been packed full with shopping, studying for finals, volunteering, and wrapping Christmas gifts for the children in my English class, the orphanage, and in the Christian refugee camps in Orissa. On my last day of English class, everyone in the slum brought me grapes and bananas (hundreds of them) because that was all they could do to thank me for teaching their children.

As you can probably imagine, there is so much more to write, and yet so much more to do…! Nevertheless, I’ll be home to share my experience in a few days.

---