Nonetheless, despite all their pains of making the biggest deal out of my birthday, I truly enjoyed it. My birthday was on a Monday, so the week before they started scheming. "Kate Miss, we don't have to go to computers on Monday. Come to this room instead. And come 10 minutes late." "Kate Miss, what's your favorite flavor? Chocolate? Ok." "Kate Miss, I know what they're all planning-- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!" Lots of whispers and hushes and excited yelps. Vidiya Lakshmi came up to warn me: "I hope you're prepared for Monday." I laughed and admitted I knew they were all excited about my birthday. Apparently Adu had told her, "But Vidiya Miss, she's all alone, she doesn't have any family here. We NEED to do something for her! What if she starts CRYING?! Who's going to be there to comfort her?" This is how sweet these kids are. You don't really get a much better job than this.
For Monday, I bought 80 Kit Kats, which isn't even enough for all the students I see everyday, but oh well. It's traditional to give out chocolate on your birthday, and I told them all that when I was a little girl my mom called me Kit Kat. So for the week they all called me Kit Kat Kate. It being a Monday, I wore my teacher's sari which is our uniform for Mondays. This made all the kids gasp, "But WHY didn't you wear your COLORED dress today?" Everyone wears "colored dress" on their birthdays, which means new clothes that are NOT your uniform. This lets others know it's your birthday. I told them grown-ups don't need to wear colored dress. Besides, I was saving my money for when my sisters came. I'm way too good at buying clothes for myself, so I practiced restraint this year.
After lunch, the party started. The whole 5th standard planned it with the help of Vidia Lakshmi. Each one had made a homemade birthday card for me. I also got a nice pen and a purple plastic dolphin clock. They all had glittery birthday hats, and Priyanka's mom had bought a beautiful, delicious and fancy chocolate cake complete with edible white chocolate bobbly-boos. Yum. They all sang me happy birthday, and the principal came to stuff cake into my mouth with her bare hands (another tradition here.) It was great. I cut cake for all 31 guests. It was very orderly with the help of the teacher and principal, and they cleaned up spic and span just 10 minutes from when it all began. Then I opened all the cards and oohed and aahed at their thoughtful craftsmanship.
But there was a surprise waiting for me 7th hour. My 6th standard also had something up their sleeves, and they had kept it quite secret from me. In the morning I had just given them their English exam, so our focus had been on that the previous week. But they also had something on the back burner.
Someone came up to me and told me to come to the gazebo in the back garden for our class, "but not YET!" I said Ok, and waited to be escorted. It was raining that day, so they were all scampering around in bare feet. They made me cover my eyes, so I walked carefully with my sari cape in front of me just so I could see the ground below and all the little feet dancing excitingly around. All these tiny toads had come out for the rain, so they were hopping everywhere, dodging our feet. When I got into the gazebo, I pulled away my saree and there were 15 smiling faces, all barefoot and glowing, screaming "Happy Birthday!" around the sweetest little cake. It was really precious. This class I particularly love, and oh man they showed it back to me this day. I cut the cake, but not before they all took the first piece and EACH one of the 15 of them grabbed a hunk of it to stuff into my mouth and smear all over my face. It was hilarious! I cut their pieces with my face full of crap, and then gave them all hugs trying to wipe the frosting back onto them. We danced and played in the rain. Great, great Birthday!
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