Mi Cumpleaños!

My birthday was good. I was woken up in the morning with a knock on my door. Quickly there after my whole family streamed into the room with a cake and began singing happy birthday. My first reaction was to hide under my sheats... I like a little time to wake up, especially since it was 5:30... Here in ecuador they always sing happy birthday in English and then in Spanish. So two candles were lit, a 1 and a 7. I blew them out with a little difficulty since my sister was sitting on me. I was told to bite the cake so I did, it was a long role like thing, chocolate and vanilla with fruit in the middle. Later after everyone had left my room I checked my cell phone to find a text message from a friend of mine, she had woken up at 12 in the morning and sent it to me.
At school, I recieved a lot of happy birthdays. The only thing that was really wild was the great ecuadorian tradition of getting hit with your belt... 17 times. Now I've never expirienced this before... and I don't really want to ever again. But during the second break I took off my belt and freinds and non-friends beat the crap out of me. My sister hit me first, then was Adam and Polo. After these three it was a line of people. I was hugging a tree as people wailed on me. The first five were fine, my pain tolerance was fine. But number 13 was a kid that I know from playing soccer at the break. He had a wide belt on, he took it off stepped back and hit me. I practically fell over and cried, it hurt soooo bad. I almost couldn't go on, I felt like I was on fire. At one point a kid was about to hit me, and I was like, "who are you?" he introduced himself and hit me. This tradition is quite weird but definatly something to expireince. Moving hurt for the rest of the day. And the General Inspector came and tried to break up the beating but it continued all the same.
After school Adam and I went to La Mariscal, the turist district where all of the discos and English Speaking people are. We went into an English book store, which felt like one of the funky used book stores that can be found in Ashland! After that we went to eat, Shawarmas, a really good middle eastern food that is hot meat with a flat pita like bread and with some really good sauces... yumm. I met my dad at his work and we drove back to my house.
We left to go out and eat lasagna which I have really missed since I've been here. We first went to the mall to see about switching a new pair of jeans that my family gave me for my birthday. We couln't find another pair that worked out so I'm gonna use these, we also bought two new shirts, a longsleeved pink dress shirt and a short sleeved dress shirt. We left the mall to find a huge stage in the park next to it. There was a band up there playing Pink Floyd. We went closer to check it out and on the other side of the stage they were sending mini hot air baloons with flashing sparks. They sent out 17, and then there was a long pause. It seemed pretty cool, after a few minutes another 20 or so were sent up. We left to go and eat. The place that we went to was empty, just us. We all got different lasagnas, they were little personal lasagnas baked in clay platters. The pasta wasn't all that great but, all in all, it was good!
That was my day, a good adventure. But I really did miss my friends and family. It just didn't feel the same without everyone that has always been a part of my life.