When I studied abroad, I was insanely jealous of my fellow Americans who had early-year birthdays and got to celebrate in Oz. I thought of making up an “Australia birthday” just to get one myself.
But as you might recall, when the idea of spending my birthday away was actually creeping near, I was getting a bit sad. It’s not that I’ve had amazing birthdays back home. In fact after years of disappointing (and even a couple horrible/tragic) birthdays, I started planning my own birthday get togethers (which works out quite well…you always get your favorite kind of cake then).
Being abroad, though, I didn’t plan anything and just figured I’d have a day like any other. When the big day came, though…well, I have to say it was a pretty darn fabulous day. Right at midnight four of us had a glass of the banana wine from the local wine festival (and I got a few fab presents, too!). After a good night’s sleep, I came to the office for a round of “happy birthdays” as everyone made a point to stop by and say so.
Then for lunch, the girls had made a great big meal (all veg, of course). For dinner, we went to the Team Leader’s house and had another homemade meal (her nieces, too, remembered to make it all veg) while listening to the soothing sounds of Sean Kingston, No Doubt, and Nelly Furtado (her nieces, too, requested I bring my computer for music). My seat at the dinner table was pretty fab, too. And really made me feel a bit like being at home; it gave me a full view of the family calendar for 2008, which starts off with a picture of St. Louis and the Arch.
And even though my ever-so-thoughtful sis knew to send birthday wishes on my big day, I of course got the birthday call from my parents the next day. If you know the folks, this is no big surprise. They hardly remember to call before midnight on my birthday when I’m in Cali…expecting them to remember it AND the time change when I’m in India, well, that’s just too much. I attribute it to the fact that there’s not that whole painful-birth memory to etch the day in their minds. Still, they remembered to call when it was December 5th in Missouri.
When I finally made it to onto the Internet on that next day, I got to get lots of the happy-birthday e-mails and posts, too.
Yeah…fab day in all.
And if you’d like to see them making me birthday roti…
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