birthday

Friday was my birthday. Thanks for all the well wishes and greetings. Emails and facebook messages from all over the world, texts from US, England, Luxembourg (and Malawi), and calls from US, Canada nd England. It was a great day. It happened to coincide with the last day of term at school so everyone was in a pretty good mood. (not that they aren’t usually—esp on a Friday). It was a short day at school as well. And I’ll have to admit it felt like I was just biding my time until 10 when the kids left…there was no power at school so I was at a bit of a standstill. Went to the market and bought sweets to give to the kids…I normally don’t do this as they ask for too much already but I figure once a year is ok. I went into each classroom where they sang me happy birthday and then I gave sweets. The kids were so cute. After the kids left we had a teachers meeting to bid farewell to Sandra and Magrate (see next post). We were supposed to have cake but it never arrived and the network was down so we couldn’t check on it…luckily there were enough sweets for the teachers too. They gave me a beautiful chitenji that I wrapped around myself immediately and wore on the walk home.
Spent the afternoon baking first in the cottage then at Ute’s. and then for my party. The Jones’ were gracious enough to host…soup and bread and cake…I brought cake and bread (with help from many others) and it was a great gathering. It always feels like such a production to organize one of these get-togethers but they are really enjoyable and actually not that much work…but I was quite happy to crawl into bed that night.