As many of you travelers know, being away from your birthday and being thousands of miles away from your mom's homemade Hersheys chocolate cake can be titering on the edge of unbearable. Yesterday I celebrated my birthday here in Xizhou. Like many other birthdays, when I woke up right away, I didn't feel a year older, but I knew it was going to be harder to be so far away from home (this girl is a Momma and Daddy's girl to her core). I knew that we were all going to have cake and celebrate, but that meant I was left to my own devices during the entire day. But what I didn't know the entire day (this girl is also extremely gullible) was that everyone was planning a birthday surprise for me that I'm still replaying in my mind.
When I woke up, I had my usual oatmeal and coffee to start the day off right. Lei Lei told me that when it is your year in the Chinese horoscope (I'm a tiger and it is the year of the Golden Tiger this year), it is a difficult year for you since the same animal is battling with itself. Bummer, I thought. I thought if it was your year, it would be filled with good luck and pots of gold at the ends of rainbows! But to counteract this difficult time, Lei Lei told me that people wear red underwear the entire year for protection. My immediate thought was, what if you wanted to wear white pants?! ha ha So my entire birthday morning was spent picking out red underwear for the rest of the wear. No need to worry, I didn't buy 365 pairs of underwear! But thanks to the cheap prices here, I was able to buy 10 pairs for around $12!
The San Fransisco Church Group is visiting the Linden Centre for the next week so it has been nothing but a constant buzz here for the last couple of days. They all chimed in throughout the morning and during lunch to wish me a happy birthday, which put me in better spirits. Then I received two "unknown caller" phone calls right after lunch. One was from a good friend in the United States and the other was from one of my French friends that I met in Thailand. Those calls definitely helped me kick my birthday blues away. The rest of the afternoon was pretty laid back where I just wrote emails, took a long birthday walk, read my book, and took a birthday cat nap.
As I said before, this girl is extremely gullible. No, I won't fall for that trick if you tell me that "Gullible" is written on the ceiling, but I will have no idea if people are planning surprises for me. The entire day I barely saw Jeanee, Bryce, and Shane. I just thought that they were busy with the guests or working. Lei Lei kept me company and tried to keep my spirits up when I looked at her with puppy dog eyes wondering what I should do for the entire day while everyone worked. But I kept busy and soon it was time for English Corner. As a little birthday present to me, Jeanee told me that the group that is here would be able to teach the kids tonight so I could take the night off. I was relieved since I could just relax and not have to frantically make up a lesson. Lei Lei, Adrian, and I decided to play cards called "Fighting with the Landlord." Its a really popular game in China and I thought that Lei Lei wanted to teach me so we could play later that night, but what I didn't know was that it was apart of the master plan...
It was around 7:20pm and I was imagining the English Corner lesson to start winding down and the guests would come back for dinner. Lei Lei thought that it would be good if we should just take a peak and see what they were doing over there. All I was thinking was, "Why are we going over there? It's my day off from English Corner?!" Even though I was questioning it, I decided to go along. As we entered the basketball court, I saw all the kids sitting around the pin-pong table and I just assumed that they were still being taught "The Wheels on the Bus." But then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of light from a candle and I began to think...hmmm...something might be happening here. I walked up to the table where all of my students were and they all had red candles (all 24) in front of them and they began to sing Happy Birthday to me with the help of the Linden Centre guests. Since I was so happy and totally surprised, I just began crying! Tears were just coming down my face as they all sang. Then I saw a basket full of presents that my students brought for me. It was filled with birthday cards, apples, oranges, a cute snow globe, beautiful hand sewn ornaments, and a coffee cup set. I also received a plant from my oldest student (I think he is in his 30's and his daughter, Coco, is also one of my students) and he told me that he has been growing this plant for the last two years. As I opened all of my presents, through my tears, I kept thanking all of my students. This was the best surprise! At the end of the English Corner lesson, we all took pictures together as a class. Such an amazing night!
We all walked back to the centre for dinner and I was still in shock. I kept hugging Jeanee and thanking her for such a great surprise. There are tons of pictures of the entire surprise, tears and all. After dinner, we had chocolate-chocolate cake with Jeanee's famous buttercream frosting and I opened presents. I received a beautiful silk scarf from Lei Lei, a fun shirt and amazing hot pink purse from Jeanee and Brian, a box of choclates from Frank, access to Facebook :) and an extreme tourist cowboy hat from Adrian, and a hand sewn tiger ornament from Bryce. This day was incredibly amazing. I'm still replaying it in my mind! And thanks to all of you across the seas who have been wishing me birthday blessings throughout the day! Love you all and miss you!
Peace, Love and Sweet Travels,
Martha