China Birthday

I’m 24 years old. I’m in my mid-twenties—no longer a fresh-out-of-college 22-year-old but a 2-year veteran of the “real world” (whatever that means).

As with so many other stages in life, I’ve reached this point only to realize that “wait, I still don’t know what I’m doing.”

I have a clear memory of little 2^nd-grade me walking up the stairs of Mary Munford Elementary School, gazing at the gargantuan fifth graders up ahead, and knowing, without a lick of doubt, that these kids understood what was going on. They had everything all figured out.

Only, then, one day, I was a fifth grader, and there was still a lot I didn’t get. But middle schoolers, they were sure to understand it all. …Nope.

Well, perhaps once I was in high school and knew how to drive, or perhaps once I got to college, or got to be a senior in college, or graduated from college, or went to live on the other side of the world…. Oh. So all the wisdom and knowledge of adulthood doesn’t just show up one day?

Shucks.

Anyway, I’ve celebrated my last several birthdays away from my family, but this was my first time celebrating abroad, and, because I have a summer birthday, it was also my first time celebrating on a regular old workday. Hence, much of my day didn’t feel all that birthday-like. I’d told my students that I wanted my present to be good behavior, but for my first two classes that was apparently too much to ask. I got to skype with a friend for about ten minutes during the afternoon, and Malijun gave me a beer, but but frankly, I was pretty mopey until after my 3 o’clock class.

I still had a couple of hours before my evening marathon class, so I decided to bike into town for bubble tea and also pick up a bar of chocolate to supplement the ghiradellhi Mark was kind enough to bring me back from America. I made a rice cooker cake. Specifically I made a mint mocha cake (chocolate with hints of mint and coffee) with a thin coffee frosting/filling between the two layers and a bailey’s (again, courtesy of Mark) chocolate glaze over top. It was, unfortunately, rather ugly when done, so no pictures. But it was darn tasty.

The first half hour of the evening class was its usual self—reviewing vocabulary and the like. Then, after the five-minute break, we went outside and spent the next half an hour playing basketball against Yiming’s class.

Class 82 has major troublemakers who happen to be talented basketball players. Despite a rule stating that only two of my class’s top five players could be on the court at any moment, we crushed the opposition. Meanwhile, I took pictures of my kids (whether they wanted to be photographed or not). Here we have Mike and Zach, and Laura and Sam (Samantha, she now insists, after the mortifying discovery of Sam listed in the textbook as a "boy's name").

Yiming’s class went in at 7:30, and we stayed out until 8. (I’d decided over the weekend that I might have an evening class on my birthday, but I was not going to spend the whole two hours fighting my students into being quiet and listening while we covered real content.)

Some of my kids opted to keep playing basketball, and a few asked if they could go back to the classroom and do homework, but I managed to corral the rest into learning all about the very important American staples of duck duck goose, octopus tag, and red rover. It was silly and fun. After I shepherded them back inside, I saw that the trustworthy girls I’d allowed to go in early and start their homework had,

in fact, decorated the entire blackboard with birthday wishes. The

class sang me happy birthday in English and Chinese. I got presents from two students and notes from a few more (see pictures of presents. They are epic things, they are). Touched, I thanked them profusely. Then it was homework time. Most kids were tired enough from all the running around that they either buckled down into work or at least kept quiet so their classmates could. All in all, it was a lovely class.

After the bell rang, I headed back to my room. Mark had candles leftover from Malijun’s birthday a few weeks ago, so I stuck them in my cake and got the gang over. Yiming’s girlfriend, who was visiting from Hong Kong, made a small fruit salad, and Yiming gave me a plant that’s currently sucking up sunshine on my windowsill. We ate the cake (sadly for me, no leftovers remaining), and just relaxed for a little while before splitting up so we could all get work done for Tuesday morning. It was not a typical American birthday, perhaps, but that doesn't mean it wasn't memorable.