Yesterday, I had my fourth birthday cake. My birthday was two weeks ago, on Friday, April 6th, and my friends and family here made it a really special one. The Thursday before, Semra and Fettah had to go to Bodrum because Fettah's mom just had surgery. I was sad because I thought that they weren't going to be in Afyon for my birthday. But on Wednesday night, they had a surprise celebration for me, with a cake and everything. The cake said "İyiki Doğdun (which means happy birthday) Rebeka". And no, my family didn't spell my name incorrectly, the cake place did. This is because in Turkish, "c" is pronounced like "j". So when Turks read my name, they read it as "Rebeja". So, when the cake place heard my name, they just assumed that it was spelled with a "k".

That was my first party. During school on Friday, not only did I receive a lot of surprise gifts from my classmates, but I got another surprise cake as well. When I was waiting in line for lunch, my friend Apo came up to me and started taking me to his classroom. I visit his class all the time during his English lessons, but I couldn't figure out why we were going there during lunch. I kept saying "Apo, nereye gidiyoruz? Yemeğim geliyor..." (Where are we going? My food's coming). It wasn't until after we got there, and I walked into the classroom to see another one of my friends, Mustafa, lighting candles on a cake for me, and their entire class started singing "Happy Birthday" (in both Turkish and English at the same time) that I figured it out. I was so surprised, I am not even an actual member of that class! But I do visit it at least twice a week, so I guess I'm an honorary member...

My third party happened on Friday night. Because Fettah and Semra had to go to Bodrum, I switched families. I am now staying with my counselor, Ender's, sister and her family. Ender and his sister, Dilek, are neighbors (they live two houses apart), so I am kind of staying with both families at once. So now my new host mom's name is Dilek, her husband is İsmail, and they have two daughters: Işıl (who's 7) and Damla (who's 12). Semra and Fettah are going to be doing a lot of travelling during the coming month, but when they come back, sometime in May, I will be going back and finishing my exchange year with them.
Anyway, on Friday, there was a class meeting for Damla's class, so all the parents of her classmates (and some of her classmates as well) came to my house. In the middle of this meeting, Dilek had me come into the living room, where I found my third birthday cake. I also received gifts from my new host family and from the parents at the meeting as well, which was really sweet of them.

Yesterday, my friends gave me a party at place in town called Cafe Paşa. That was where I had my fourth cake. It was going to be a surprise party, but when my friend Merve told me not to plan anything on Saturday, because there was this "thing", I figured it out. It was really nice of them to do that for me, and it was a ton of fun.

Last week I had another surprise; it wasn't a birthday surprise, but a Passover surprise. There is no passover-kosher food to be found in Afyon, and it was just too hard for me to have Passover this year. But one day, my neighbor Fatma invited me over to her house. When I got there, I found that she had made haroset and an entire yeast-free meal for me, which was delicious.

So that's whats been going on with me. Hope everyone had a good Passover or Easter!