birthdays and parties

This week we went out! YEA!
But first we had a quiet birthday for Matan on Sunday. His mom got him a silly metal sculpture of a rickshaw.


Colorful, though, eh? Sometimes he'd rather not arrive to a destination by rickshaw when everyone else has drivers. And sometimes he'd rather not arrive with his mom. OK, definitely his 16th birthday.



On Tuesday night, we went to a friend's birthday party in a nearby neighborhood. They have three boys so Matan was very happy to be there.



On the way we saw a building lit up for a wedding. There are weddings nearly every night during the winter. The parties are up on the roof.



On Wednesday, the whole department interrupted a professor's class to wish him a happy birthday and have some cake!

On Thursday our landlord called and said that we were invited to a party on the roof that night! I'm so glad we didn't have plans since it was a real treat. I'll add pictures of it later (when I saw that my neighbor had a camera, I asked if he'd send me pictures). Turns out that not only was it his 32nd birthday, but a chance to celebrate his wife's 7th month of pregnancy. Here the pregnant woman gets new (and in this case) very sparkly clothes and sits surrounded by sweets. Each person comes up and sits nexts to her and feeds her a sweet. She, in return, feeds that person. Lovely ceremony. And then everyone eats all of the sweets. Then birthday cake. Then a huge dinner. All up on the roof.

It was the first time, in nearly six months, that I met the women of the family.

I wasn't feeling well at all so I really couldn't eat anything. What a shame. I had some kind of stomach flu or food poisoning from Thurs through Sat. Finally feeling better. We've been pretty fortunate not to have had any serious gastro problems, but there are days that we have to go easy because something's disagreed with our systems.

I also got a present this week:



Odd that I didn't realize how much I needed a desk. Maybe working in bed is not efficient? I know that I don't like doing work at the dining room table here. So now I have this very nice desk in my study corner of my room, surrounded by windows facing east with great morning sun. (Ok one direction faces south into another building [site] with concrete views. we'll ignore that one, there are curtains).