Day 29 - My Birthday!

I feel like I should write some spectacular episode about this oh so important day of my life. But really, it was just about like any other day I've had here in Ukraine. I woke up and hadn't even remembered it was my birthday until I went to my wardrobe sort of thing in the hallway. My host-parents, Sasha and Lena, had made a big card for me saying, "Happy Birthday!" on it with a big present of a picture. It made me smile, and I was determined that I would allow myself to have a pretty good day for the rest of the day. Maddy was still sick, so I had to improvise a lot, but on the way to school, I had this genious idea to do "kitchen" early that week (we usually have it on Fridays), because the kids LOVE kitchen, and they tend to be more well behaved when they know it makes a difference between cookie and no cookie at the end of the day :) Adrienne and Denae came and subbed for the 30 minute cross-over where we have the kids that overlap. The kids were pretty great though that day, and the activities I had prepped seemed to all work out, so things flowed pretty well through the school day.

Oh! And Nelya (my coordinator) gave me a box of chocolates that were SO tasty. The closest thing I could compare them to would be "3 Musketeer's", but they were fluffier and fruitier than what I know. After school, I stayed around a while to hang out with the others/ wait for my daily lunch to come to the school. We got the crepe-sort-of-things that have chicken and other tasty things all inside. I came back home and my host-family (and Julia's Tutor and the cleaner lady) all congratulated me on my birthday (I was thinking about it, it's kind of funny that we congratulate each other on getting a year older, or maybe it's just a Ukrainian thing, I've never really noticed before). I got some art-work from Julia and a really nice dress from Lena. The art work is something like a spider web drawing  with a ribbon to hang it from the middle, it sort of reminds me of a dream catcher. My dress is a gold color and would look really cute with a belt and leggings. But I'm not exactly sure how to wear it at the moment yet, because it's pretty short, and I don't really feel comfortable just wearing leggings with it. Maybe with some dark jeans or slacks? Anyways, its a wonderful gift, and I hope I can find a way to make it work with my standards AND find an opportunity to wear and show it off while I'm still here in Ukraine with my host-family.

At about 7:30, I met up with some people to go to TGI Fridays. As you may or may not know already, my phone is currently lost, and I didn't have any telephone communication devices in which to call people and invite them to come. I don't think the others will be offended though. We had a fun group though In the picture to the right, you can see from left to right Adrienne, Christina, Igor, Madeline, and Igor. The food there was great; truly American stuff, hardly a tint even that reminded me I was still eating food in Ukraine.

The whole time I really wanted to be sung to by the restaurant people. I asked Igor to ask if they do anything for birthdays. When he did, the waitress only asked for an ID to prove it was my birthday, then said, "Happy Birthday!" I felt gypped. I thought maybe they just needed proof to be able to tell me "Happy Birthday" or something. But later there was this whole group of waiters and waitresses that came out from the back. They were all so smiley, and at first I thought they were even singing in Russian. But it was an English song I think (Du Wah Diddy). At the end of the song, Adrienne got the perfect picture of me blowing out the candle on the ice cream they gave to me. We ate SO much dessert, but it was so tasty, and it was my birthday, so I thought it was a good enough excuse to just indulge :)