Birthday Eve and Birthday

Birthday Eve:

I did not cook Singaporean food. I went to Dan and Sam's house with Aviel. They are all new friends. :D We made brownies instead of Singaporean food. Then I tried out a blow gun for the first time, and also played with a bow and arrow, and I wasn't too bad at either one! I was, however, pretty bad at nunchucks and Japanese hackeysacks, which I also tried out. We listened to some Spanish music, trying to translate it as we went. I am terrible at understanding Spanish in music! At first I figured that it would be the same for all languages, but it really isn't! XD German, Norwegian, and Japanese, for example, are usually almost as clear in a song as in speech. Ah well.

Later, we went to the potluck, which was fun. It was strange as always to eat lots of fried rice, some very spicy curry, fish in tamarind sauce, and other asian dishes alongside some good, old fashioned American food such as a western-tasting vegetable soup and corn bread. And for dessert, guava paste alongside brownies! :D I didn't know too many people there, but I find that I am getting more brave about things like that every day! Ju and Prite were there, and so was Linh.

Linh's English is still terrible! Poor girl. :D At one point I was being a bit silly and stood up on a stool so that I was as tall as an American girl I was talking to. Then later I was talking to Linh and I ended up patting her on the head. One second later I realized what I had done and said, "Ah! Linh! I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have patted you on the head!" I know that it is impolite in some places to touch people on the head... and I was sure Vietnam was in that region, although I wasn't certain as to whether that custom applied to Vietnamese. She told me it wasn't a big deal, though, because we are friends. :) Okay, I guess...

I entered an eating-with-chopsticks competition with some Asians. This wasn't as bad of an idea as it sounds, because they were Thai, mostly, and therefore only used to eating noodles and such with chopsticks. We ate rice grain by grain. :D I actually won! Haha...

Later we played a game that was essentially the childhood game of Telephone, but with drawings. It was really fun, if I get a FIG next year I'm going to make them play it as an ice breaker. :) Each person takes as many slips of paper as there are people in the group. Then, on the first piece, each person draws a simple picture. Then everyone passes their stack of papers to the next person. The next person looks at the picture and describes it in three words. Then the papers are passed again, and the next person looks only at the words, not the original picture, and draws a picture based on the words. The next person looks only at this second picture, and... you get the idea. :D There were really some hilarious things that came out of this! It was exacerbated by having foreigners that didn't know some words, but even in a group of native speakers a bad artist will mess things up considerably! Plus, one can always take more time and make more complex pictures if the group is doing too well. ;)


Birthday:

I slept in, rolled out of bed, (not literally, my feet is three and a half feet (1 meter) off the ground now), and went to Dobbs at 1, expecting Brunch. No such luck! Daylight Savings Time has begun here, so I ate nothing and liked it. XD Well, actually, cereal was still out, so I ate a few bowls of frosted flakes. I didn't expect to find anyone to sit with, but I saw Pat, Clint, and Maria, and thought... why not sit with them while they finish up? Pat left after a while, but even after I had finished eating Clint and Maria and I were still talking... we ended up talking for two hours, and then it was dinner time at Dobbs! We could have eaten for free, haha. But, we weren't hungry anymore, so I just stole a bit of milk and went back home.

I got some really sweet birthday wishes via the net. :) And otherwise just mosied around. Jorge actually came to see me, which was really sweet. And it wasn't overly awkward, like normally when we see each other now. I told him about adventures from last night and then he left, saying, "Smile, be happy!" I think that might be his new motto or something. Dunno why he needs a motto, or why that should be fitting, because he's normally rather gloomy, but there it is!

Parents called. Lucia/Lydia called. Both Grandmas called. :)

Then Tabi came home, and we hung out for a bit (she made me brownies! How sweet! :D), and then just as Laura got home too we had my birthday party. :D My cake was delicious! I think it was the best birthday cake here yet! Even though it was Spongebob Squarepants themed... and, erm... I happen to hate Spongebob Squarepants. XD Certainly I never once imagined that I would have a Spongebob Squarepants themed birthday cake, and I certainly thought that the window of opportunity for that was closed by now, but surprise! I am generally the cake cutter here, I dunno why, normally because they use my knife (one of the few big chef knives that we own), and I even cut my own cake! I almost cut Spongebob in half doing so... and actually all the Japanese girls squealed and complained! XD

Both Lauras and Tabi and I went to Laura's room for a while. We played with a plastic bag, which Laura said was my Christmas present from her. Laura T. made some lovely fashion statements with it after Laura W. ripped it. :( It was such a lovely pillow before that! Then something interesting happened... Jiyoung facebook chatted Laura.

She never facebook chats us. She never /talks/ to us.

Jiyoung: Um... can I ask you favour?
Laura: Okay?
Jiyoung: This sounds weird...
Jiyoung: But I am locked in room.
Jiyoung: The door is not able to open.

I went out of the room quickly upon hearing that, even though for some reason Laura called behind me, "no, Miranda, stay here!" I went to Jiyoung's door and knocked, and asked if she was okay. She told me she was trapped and the door wouldn't open. I was playing with the door handle a bit when Laura, Laura, and Tabi joined me in the hall. After a minute, none of us could do anything with it. The handle wasn't engaging. So I ran upstairs to get Ben. Ben came down and started playing with it. I ran downstairs to tell the desk supervisor. He called some other C.A.'s and soon we had a crowd playing with old credit cards, wire clothes hangers, and screwdrivers trying to find a way in. Unfortunately the doors here are all but break in proof, from the inside or out.

Jiyoung kept shouting, "I want to pee! I want to pee!" We were worried that she would have to pee in a cup, and word arrived that we had to wait 30 minutes for anyone who knew anything to arrive. Finally they did, and they had to remove the doorknob, piece by piece, with metal cutting tools, until they could pull of the twisty part and pull the... erm... stoppy part out from the inside. A full hour after the adventure started, Jiyoung was finally free to pee! Everyone clapped. It was quite an adventure, but Laura and Tabi and I stayed for the whole thing, partly because we felt responsible, having received her cry for help, and I partly because I am hoping to 'be' Ben next year and deal with similar issues.

Back in my room, Mayumi gave me a very sweet birthday card from Mitsuki, Mimi, Richard, and herself! :D Then I wrote this blog post... XD And it wasn't my birthday anymore. What a shame. :P

Edit: Then Tomomi came in. She had hand made me a beautiful... erm... paper thing saying, "Happy Birthday Mira Chan!" She also gave me a box of Glico caramels and a tiny book in Japanese about the Zodiac animals. Since it is all written in Hiragana (which I can read, albeit very, very, very slowly), and it is a story that I am familiar with, we joked that it was at my reading level. XD Of course, I really know less than ten percent of the words, so it would take a while to read! Anyway, a really sweet gift!