What a special birthday! It's been very different from every other birthday. I usually celebrate with my family (birthday person gets to pick the place!), but I actually celebrated at home this year almost a full month in advanced. We usually get to eat out a lot around this time! My sister's bday is on Aug 18th, exactly two weeks later is mine, and then my dad's is on the 9th, and we all have different ideas of where we want to eat!
My friends are usually great, too! Kevin always gets me a really silly card, Beth always gets me lots of little goodies from Target, and Lexi generally buys me something I would have bought myself if I bought myself a birthday present or makes me something tasty (she knows me too well). I would say my friends make a bigger deal out of my birthday than I do.
Mark (though we don't have as long standing of a tradition) is a thoughtful gift-buyer, too.
But like I said, this year was different. With Mark attending medical school, his focus needs to be on classes and studying...not roaming around the unknown land of Grenada in search for something for me. (It's still very unknown to him!). And definitely not ordering something off the internet. All I wanted from Mark was lunch together and the promise of some time together this weekend, to go out to eat. Mark's schedule for the day was 7:45am anatomy lab, lasting until noon, lunch with me from noon-12:45 when he heads back to class which goes until 5, then home for a snack, then off again to an Emergency Medicine Club demonstration at 6, and home at 8pm. We also dropped off and form at lunch and went to pick up the form to get a week-long loan for a netbook, and met a guy to check out his laptop for sale (in our hour together before the EMC meeting). My schedule was a little less exhausting!
I woke up to his alarm, (unfortunately, that's not early for me) but took my time getting out of bed! I got up around 8:15 and started looking through my school stuff, doing some postings, readings, and getting a drift as to what I'll need to do for my three classes. I did that pretty much all morning. I met Mark at the building to take care of this form, he grabbed some Indian food on the way home, I made PB&J and chocolate milk (all I'll ever need in life!), and then he was gone again.
I headed to the pool with Rachel, but ran into Sayeh (another SO from Iran who has a baby!) who offered to drive us to L'Anse Aux-Epines (LAE from here on) as she was headed to the pool as well! So we hopped in and just barely beat the bus. However, we parked pretty far out and the bus stops right by the building. We walked in and signed our names (for some reason we have to do this...) on the clipboard and ran into Marieke and Emily who had just gotten off the bus! We headed down to the pool, I sat my stuff down in the shade, and started putting my sunscreen on. Jessie and probably about 15 other SOs were there (not unusual for pool day!). Jessie lives in my building on campus and had asked me when I was coming the day before (research stalking, I guess!). Just then, Emily and Marieke came down to the pool carrying a cake...for me! They had baked me a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and cut the top out to look like a music note! And it hit the spot! It was so tasty! They also made me a super sweet card! You know you've met truly genuine people when you barely know them (like 2 weeks?!) and they go out of their way to make your day special! I cannot wait to get to know those ladies and all the SOs here better! What would have been just another day turned into a special celebration, a recollection of old friends, and promise of many new friends with great times to be had!
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| The front of the card (I love that it's all recycled!) Partly because they are eathy people, and also because that's what we have in Grenada, post-its magazines, newspapers... |
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| It's definitely less depressing being 23 with all that information! |
