ulang tahun ke-tujuhebelas di Indonesia

here's a quick bahasa lesson:

ulang tahun= birthday

tujuhbelas= seventeen (add ke- to make it seventeenth)

selamat ulang tahun= happy birthday

Hopefully from this very quick and informative lesson you are able to translate the title, which is "seventeenth birthday in indonesia". I turned seventeen a week ago and it was been a whirwind experience involving more cake than I possibly could eat on my own and celebrating with my favorite jumble of multicultural friends I have managed to make here.

On Saturday night I invited a few friends from school over and we had a small party, eating cake and talking and all that fun stuff. 

Sunday was my actual birthday, but since there was a wedding I was attending I had planned on celebrating on Saturday and leaving it at that, which didn't exactly happen. I watched the wedding festivities with my host family. My host dad's secretary (who is also our next door neighbor) was getting married and the ceremonies were in the street right in front of our house. I could hear the music all day from inside my house and the tables of food went right up our driveway. My host sister took me to our neighbor's house and they taught me how to properly wear a jilbab, which is a longer process than I realized. 

After the wedding I went to the AFS chapter Jakarta open house, an event for Indonesian high schoolers who are interested in joining AFS and/or the YES Program. It was really fun to talk to them all and share my experiences here as well as talk to Indonesian YES alumni who had been to the US before. After the open house I went out to dinner with the AFS Indonesia volunteers and had a nice birthday dinner, complete with yet another cake.

at the open house with Indonesian YES returnees

We ended up at a Japanese restaurant because I saw other bule there and felt the need to investigate. I never did talk to them but by overhearing their accents I can definitely confirm they were Australian. I do live in Jakarta so there's a fair amount of bule here but I definitely still get excited when I see them, as most foreigners who come to Indonesia have an interesting story.

When I went to school the next morning, my host dad warned me my classmates might do something big. I then went through the whole day pretty paranoid, completely not sure what to expect. At the end of the day my friends told me I was going to recite Pancasila ( the 5 points of Indonesian ideology which I had just attempted to memorize) in front of my teacher. I am not a fan of reciting things (especially in other languages) so I reluctantly followed them down the stairs towards the teachers lounge. As we were making our way down, a random friend came out of nowhere and put a blindfold me on me. I was so surprised but my friend held my hand and just told me to follow her. 

We made our way to the central volleyball court when I suddenly heard a roar of applause and cheering. My friends took the blind fold off and standing in front of me was the entire eleventh grade, roughly 250 people. My friends were holding a giant banner that read "Selamat ulang tahun Sarahbule!" and all 250 of them had signed it. My immediate reaction was to burst out laughing, it was so unlike anything I could have possibly imagined happening on my birthday but it was perfect.

My friends and I went back inside since it started to rain and we ate cake and watched korean game shows until we all went home. It was a good day.

Birthdays are both the completion of one chapter and the beginning of another. Thinking of where I was at my sixteenth birthday (eating pizza with my friends a mere six days before finding out I was coming to Indonesia) feels like a lifetime ago. Birthdays prove just how much can change in only a year. A year ago I never would have imagined my next birthday would be 9000 miles away, but that's the beauty of life and the unexpected path you may find yourself on. I wouldn't trade this past year for anything in the world, and I hope I can continue to grow and learn from this experience even after I go home. 

P.S. my official return date is July 12, and I will be back in madison as of July 15th.