Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday rolled around again. The second time I’ve celebrated it here in country. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for long enough to celebrate two birthdays. This year Elise came over and my friend Ben came down and we went to this pool that’s at this Italian restaurant in San Juan. Somehow we missed discovering it until just recently and to think of the fun we could have had if we had only known. Luckily, there’s still some months left to enjoy it. It’s this beautiful pool and it has this gazebo which is elevated over the pool and you can swim under. Of course, we had to sit up there. We had some decent Italian food for lunch and swam around for a couple of hours in the water. Something like that makes you forget you’re in the Peace Corps for a little bit, which is actually quite nice on occassion. Then we bought some food and headed back up to my house where we cooked up a taco dinner and drank beer and wine and just hung out and talked and listened to music. Then later that night I talked to Mom, Dad, Nate, and Gretchen, and then I called Kate W at some ungodly hour and we chatted for awhile. It was so good to hear all their voices. Oh, and I got an idea to make a raised bed back behind my kitchen building so I spent an afternoon hauling rocks with some help from the neighbor boy, and then Thony came and helped too and making this little bed. I told Thony that instead of a birthday present he could fill up the raised bed with the sandy soil from the cañada near our house. He surprised me and did it while I was handing out the chicken wire to my women's group. I just planted some seeds in little containers yesterday so that I can plant in my new raised bed. I’m really hoping I’ll have more success than I have in the crappy soil that’s out behind my house. In the end it was a mellow birthday but a good one.