The Au Pairs in Dominique Ortiz’s and Kristina Scholten’s Virginia clusters spent their monthly meeting sharing birthday traditions from around the world! They learned that there were many similarities across the different cultures. This is what they learned:
- In Germany, it is a whole day celebration with family and then friends, eating cake, drinking coffee, playing games such as Topfschlagen (hit the pot), Eierlaufen ( walk with an egg in a spoon), and Schokoladen essen (eating a chocolate bar with gloves, hat, scarf, glasses on, as well as a fork and knife), going to a park or the zoo with friends or having people over for dinner.
- In Colombia, they celebrate at school with friends, at a party with family, we eat cake and ice cream.
- In Brazil, they party with family and friends, sing “Happy Birthday” clapping hands, eat cake, brigadeiro and coxinha. The first slice of cake goes to the favorite person.
- In Thailand, they celebrate with family and friends, cook together with family, sometimes go to the temple and pray, and sing “Happy Birthday” in English mostly.
- In Spain, there’s a party with family and friends where they sing, eat cake, open presents, and make a wish when blowing the candle on the cake.
- In Austria, the whole day is special, they celebrate with family and friends, sing Happy Birthday, eat cake together, and open presents.
In all these cases birthdays are celebrated with family and friends, there’s singing, and cake eating – just as in the United States!
The Au Pairs also sang “Happy Birthday” in different languages and they ended up producing a song with tidbits of Spanish,German, Chinese, and Portuguese; they named it “Our Global Birthday Song”! Click here to see a brief video of the song!