Wednesday June 18, 2014 Riley's Birthday!

Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Riley; happy birthday to you! Today was filled with celebration as we sang, danced, and bonded on Riley’s special birthday.

After breakfast and singing “Happy Birthday” to the birthday girl, we drove to Sonrise. There, we worked on our service projects. The group divided into smaller sections depending on their ideas. One group worked on bringing a buddy system into play between the primary and secondary school. (Primary school is the first six years of schooling. Later, students attend secondary school for another six years. When you ask our Sonrise buddies, “What grade are you in?” they would reply with, “I’m in S4,” which is equivalent to tenth grade. Of course we had students who were in S5 and S6, too.) Another group worked building a podium and website, so CA and Sonrise could share debate topics and speaker ideals. The other group was planning to paint a wall that represented the values of their relationship. The same mural would be painted at CA. The last group was going to start a new club focused on bringing Sonrise to the outer community and becoming involved with local charities.

After everyone was done for the day, we all went outside to play a game of soccer. It was so much fun as it joined us together. It united us all together. I lack words to describe this moment; my emotions were so strong, so unexplainable. These feeling seemed to appear later that night through a different form: music. After going back to the hotel, eating dinner, packing, and participating in a World Leadership activity, the Sonrise students threw a surprise birthday party for Riley. We danced together, many of us amazed with the students’ ability to “get down.” My mouth was so tired that night from smiling and screaming on the top of my lungs to the music. We went down to the conference room, thinking we just needed extra space for our activity. Riley opened the door and all the students were standing there and sang to her. Then we danced as the DJ played some music. It was just plain amazing!

The last song we played was “All of Me” by John Legend. It was not the first time we had sang it together. Standing in a circle with our arms around one anther, those unexplainable emotions flew back. For those few moments as we swayed back and forth, we were all united and together. We all felt as though we belonged together; it was destiny. That was the moment when we all realized how hard it would be to say goodbye to them the next day, but everyone pushed that thought to the back of their minds as to enjoy the fun we were having presently.

We all had so much fun on this day, and I think Riley’s birthday couldn’t have come on a better day for us all!