China Birthdays

So, while I was in China, I lost access to this blog, and I never posted anything on it, but here is something that I wrote while I was there....

We girls find as many reasons to party as we possibly can while we're here in Fuqing. Since none of our actual birthdays are in the months that we are here, so we decided to make 'China Birthdays.' For each one so far we have done something different. Mine was September 24, the first one, and that morning I didn't go to breakfast, so when I finally opened up my door around 10 a.m. my door was decorated with balloons and notes from each of the girls. It totally made my day! It was still a normal day of teaching, but that night we had a little party. Emily is the official birthday person, so she had made me a cake, and even figured out frosting (which was actually just cake batter--you have to be a little creative with ingredients here in China) then topped it off with sprinkles. Oh, it was divine! We played Phase 10 after that for hours and just talked and had fun.

The next birthday was Diane's. Her door was decorated too and we planned on making a cake, but the bakery was closed so we waited until the next day to try the cake. Once again it was closed (we think that it's closed on weekends, but we're not really sure...) Anyway, so that night we made cake pancakes. It was actually really good, it just took a while to make such a small amount of food. She's the least girly of us, so she decided that we should have a 'girl party' and what we ended up doing was straightening her hair and talking about boys. I also straightened my hair for the first time since I've been in China. It is so long! It definitely adds a few inches when it's straight. The two people I talked to on skype that night commented on how long it was and then the next day, our chinese teacher, Paul asked Diane and I about our hair. Apparently we look different with straight hair.

Today is the third 'China Birthday' and we all wrote notes to Kristin and Emily planned on hanging them on the door, but that didn't end up happening because of the INSANE wind. I guess there is a monsoon so for the past week or so the weather has cooled down a ton and the wind never stops blowing. Sometimes when I walk outside I feel like I'm going to blow away! Anyway, so Emily just slid them under the door. :) Then tonight we went to this amazing restaurant! It was one that we went to at the beginning for 'Summer Camp' and Mr. Li said that it had a picture menu, but in reality, it didn't. We lucked out though, there was a group of people that spoke English that helped us order. One guy was actually from Wisconsin and has been in Fuqing for four years. It was a stroke of luck that they were there! We ended tonight with a cake just like the one that we had for my birthday and there's another one in the fridge for tomorrow!