Let me eat cake

Last night Fatima’s mom arrived at our place for a visit, and it was her birthday yesterday! I was quite amused a few weeks ago when Fatima celebrated her birthday and fed bite-sized portions of cake to her students. I found the gesture intimate and sweet. In the states, we commonly witness feeding cake with one’s hands during a wedding. However, it is a custom to eat with one's hands in Bangladesh (and still in some parts of my parents' home country, the Philippines). At the time, I was set on sticking to my habit of using forks to eat and declined to let Fatima essentially stuff cake, icing and all, into my mouth. In this picture, I am meeting an “elder” for the first time, and what do you know? Five weeks have flown by and I feel comfortable enough to obey Fatima’s mother’s wishes and eat cake from her hand.