Recently, Kristen and I hosted five Tibetan friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Birthdays are not celebrated in Tibetan culture, so when we learned that Ken (we can’t remember his Tibetan name) was turning 24 the next week, we decided to throw him a party. Balloons, dinner, birthday cake and candles, games (then Tibetan circle dancing)… the whole shebang. Kristen cooked BBQ chicken tacos as well as a couple of Chinese dishes in case they didn’t care for the BBQ (they liked it). She also baked a delicious carrot cake that they ended up really liking 🙂
The preparations begin…while Kristen was cooking, my job was blowing up balloons.
China doesn’t do birthday candles, but we found this candle the day of the party. The sign in the background says Happy Birthday in Tibetan…Kristen rocked it!
Birthday Boy!
Ken is making his wish before blowing out the candle.
The crew
Ken is making us tsampa (pronounced saampa). It is a traditional snack/meal that the shepherds take with them.
It tastes similar to a peanut butter lara bar.
Ingredients: Tsampa flour, dehydrated cheese, yak butter, sugar, and water.
We really wish we would have taken a picture or video of the Tibetan circle dancing… but picture this happening in our apartment:
Overall, it was a really cool cultural experience — we have also been invited to come stay with their families next summer!
nomadic texan 