July 28, 2010

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes! I appreciate it so much! It is so great to have little notes from home while I am here. I am not much of a “It’s My Birthday!” person. I just mentioned it to my roommate, and I was surprised when a few other teachers here wished me Happy Birthday, until someone pointed out that it was posted on our school marquee. So much for keeping it quiet.

I did have a very nice birthday. I nearly bit off a colleague’s head when she was fifteen minutes late to a meeting this afternoon, but it turns out she was finishing up a birthday card which they had all of our A-group students sign it. Oops. They all wrote their English and Chinese names, so it’s a pretty great memento.

Patti, Nikki, Susan, Ann and I went to dinner at the restaurant my host family had taken me to over the weekend. It had been so delicious, and since I’m not much for cake, I thought their fried bread would be a terrific substitute. (I had Joe’s mom write out the Chinese words for fried bread just in case I made it back there.) I warned the group there was the possibility we would only be able to order fried bread for certain, because the only menu I had seen there was only in Chinese. Everyone agreed to a mystery meal if necessary, but they had a copy in English, which was almost disappointing, though not quite.

Unlike in the U.S., the Chinese servers hand you the menu and then don’t leave. They (2 servers for five people) stand there with their pen poised, making us feel like there must be something wrong with us for not having our order figured out already. While I was flipping through the vegetable dishes in the back, one of them impatiently grabbed the menu from me and flipped back up to the front, pointing to the picture of the roast duck, like stupid foreigners, here’s what you’re looking for! I did know it was a Peking style restaurant. It turns out many people do come there especially for the duck. We saw at least three other tables having it.

I showed the hovering servers my fried bread note, which gave everyone a breather while I pointed to “sweet” and “salty” and gestured for one of each. We also ordered fried rice, tomatoes with sugar, eggplant with garlic, and mushrooms and vegetables. The thing about this place is that all of these dishes are pretty much the same as what we regularly eat at our hotel, but way, way tastier. The vegetables are fresher, more tender, and not overcooked or too oily.

Nikki and Ann had stealthily ducked into a bakery on our way and bought a small cake. Susan and Patti and I had stared up and down the street for a few minutes trying to figure out where they had gone. Both of them have a reputation for getting themselves and others lost, and I had been starting to get worried. I found out later that Susan had been in on it the whole time! She totally fooled me.

Anyway, they pulled out the cake a little sheepishly at the end of the meal because I had mentioned while we were eating how I don’t really like cake. How were they to know? It was fun to get it out and celebrate and try to cut it up and serve it to each other with chopsticks anyway. And, there were a few pieces of fancy looking fruit decorating the top of the cake, one of which was a tomato! Who would pass up a cute little Chinese cake with a tomato on top? Not me! It could be my favorite cake ever!

It had rained all day, including some tremendously impressive thunder, but after dinner the rain had stopped and it was actually cool and not too humid out! It was lovely to just wander around looking in shops and not sweating uncomfortably.

But the best thing about my birthday could be that I’m in China. Patti asked me how I felt about being away from home on my birthday. Since my family always traveled in the summer when I was a kid, I feel like there’s something wrong if I’m not away from home on my birthday! Here I am traveling, just like I like.

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