My Birthday (a day early...) at School!

Today is Friday, and tomorrow is my seventeenth Birthday! This morning I awoke to put on something other than the forest green, not so attractive uniform that I have to wear everyday! Since tomorrow is my Birthday, but I don't have school, I decided to dress up in what the Indians call "color dress" (meaning normal clothes) rather than wait until Monday. At my school here, Vidhya Niketan, it is customary for the students to dress up on their birthdays and sometimes even bring chocolate for all of their friends! Every week there are always a few birthdays, and it's really nice that the kids will dress up because then I can say "Happy Birthday!" and know that it actually IS their birthday...the chocolate just depends on the person. My host mother told me that it is more the younger kids who will bring the chocolates to school, so I didn't bring any today (luckily there were only two people that were disappointed- the "ayah-ma's" which are the women who help out with the work at school! I just told them that I would bring it to them next week. They don't speak any English, so it was fun to try and explain to them why I didn't have them! They just kept saying "sweets? sweets Madi??").
My first period class was Math. I walked into the room, got a few compliments on my outfit, and then sat down, only to look around and see that everyone else had suddenly stood and started singing "Happy Birthday" to me! It was really cute- the kids all sang at the top of their lungs while the teacher stood at the front yelling over the noise, "stop being so dull! Sing louder!"
The school day ended with "zero period" once more, only today there was a "football" (soccer) match during that time! It was an inter-house competition (my school has four houses- Chera, Chola, Pallava and Pandya- all past kings of Tamil Nadu. They have inter-house competitions of all kinds. It's just like Harry Potter with all of the colors!) between the Chera and Pandya houses. I watched with a few friends from my Maths class and another friend from my class in the cool shade of the outdoor hallway next to the Biology lab. It was a great game! Watching it made me miss the game- I told all of my friends standing with me how I'm used to going and watching (or playing in) anywhere from two to four soccer games every weekend!
The bell rang at 2:00 p.m. and there was the usual scramble for the buses, followed by the second bell signaling the second scramble to get out to all of the cars and private vans. I walked out with a group of friends who also ride in vans and we took a few photos before heading off to our separate vans, squeezing in among all of the other kids, and heading off on the newly fixed road (the road leading out was just recently fixed up to have new dirt and rocks)!
P.S. The photo above is of me and a few friends before heading off for our vans!