Today we celebrated Eliana's birthday at school. I made cupcakes and filled bags of goodies for the kids to take home. It was interesting to see what birthday traditions they have in their classroom. The teacher asked her how many candles she had on her cake and she counted them in Arabic. Then when she got to six, she stood up and held out six fingers and they sang a song.
After singing the song in Arabic (which she knew all the words too!), the teacher asked her what song she wanted to sing in English. At this point Eliana got a little shy and wouldn't answer, so they sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Nothing like singing Christmas songs for a birthday party! Then we lit candles and sang "Happy Birthday To You" in English and in Arabic.
Eliana blew out her candles and we got busy serving cake to all the kids. Another girl in her class was also celebrating her birthday and her mom brought LOTS of cake, so the kids had plenty of sweets to eat at 10:30am.
Eliana and her teacher Miss Rawda.
This is one of Eliana's friends. Her name is Nardeen.
Thankfully, right after the party it was recess time. The kids all went outside and we cleaned up. It was all packed up and over in 30 minutes. And that's officially the end of the birthday celebrations for Eliana!
