I love having a September birthday. Being a nerd, it has always struck me as appropriate that my birthday comes just as classes are starting, and happens to fall in my favorite season (punny, right?). My birthday also is perfectly spaced during the run-up to my favorite set of holidays: Halloween and Thanksgiving. Throw in Christmas and New Years and September 19th basically becomes the kickoff to a whole holiday season.
September has also, however, tended to be my month of settling into new homes, which has made birthday celebrations a constant unknown. Take, for example, my first year in college, when nobody even knew it was my birthday. (This was pre-Facebook, kids…) But I learned my lesson that year, and since then, have never shied away from making sure people know ahead of time my exact moment of birth.
This year was no exception: having only arrived at my permanent site at the end of August, and with my birthday falling on a Sunday, I knew any celebration would depend on my Moldovan hosts. Well, never again will I doubt their party-planning capacities. They delivered with a full-scale Moldovan style birthday bash. From the top!
The weekend started Friday night, when my host parents’ daughter and boyfriend Rodica and Adrien arrived from Chişinău.
