A Three-Day Birthday!

Well, I made it through my 21st. Apparently my friends do like me, after all. I went to my usual Saturday morning Starbucks spot and did my normal thing until my American friend called and asked if I wanted to meet him for lunch. This is normal, as well. So I said yes, and we agreed to meet at the same pizza place we went to a couple Fridays ago. So I packed up and took the subway and a bus over to Chaoyang and then walked to the restaurant from there. On the way to the restaurant, I actually caught up with the American and my roommate. So we went in together. They had taken me to Outback Steakhouse the night before for my birthday, so I was kind of expecting not for this to be another birthday celebration, but it was. So we had a good time at lunch. Then my roommate said he had to go meet someone, so the American and I went to a Starbucks in Lido, which was a bit of a jaunt away by taxi.

At Xingbake Kafei we studied and had coffee and sat. Eventually my roommate caught up with us and sat for a while, but he seemed preoccupied and kept going out to talk on his phone. Suspicious. Then we caught a taxi back to the subway station where my bike was parked, and my roommate and I went into the Wu-Mart across the street from the station. Our friend took off to take a shower before we were slated to meet friends for my actual birthday dinner. So we went to the store, didn't find what we wanted, and left. He rode the back of my bike, as per normal. I wanted to go up and put my heavy messenger bag in my room, but he said we were to go to our friend's dorm room. Suspicious, I thought, since we never go over there. As we walked down the hall, I kept thinking, "Ok, there will be a bunch of people in his room." Nope. He was actually getting ready. When he finished, we all went over to our dorm so we could get ready ourselves.

When I opened the door to the dorm, I expected people. Nothing, though. Then I opened my suspiciously closed bedroom door. Surprise! There were 10 people in my hall of a bedroom. I'm pretty sure that's a fire code violation. It was really cool, though. Classmates and friends were there, and we were to go to dinner. I still thought we were going to Lush, which is a pretty decent, normal little place. So we went down to get taxis, and my roommate and Chanelle were asking who all had business cards for the restaurant. I was like, "I know where it is, it's no big deal." Then I was informed that we were indeed not going to Lush at all. Surprise!

We had reservations for our own little room at a nice Korean restaurant. Now, I've never been big on Korean food. This place, however, was really good. At Korean barbecues you order raw meet and there is a grill set into your table, and you cook it yourself. So that's what we did. At the restaurant we were 14 in all. That's people from four different continents for my birthday. We had a really nice time, and I was told happy birthday in 10 languages: English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Indonesian, Tagalog (Filipino), Swedish, French, Spanish, and Korean. There was a special birthday cake that had been procured for this occasion (thus my roommate going to meet someone...), and it was moist chocolate cake with a rich chocolate icing. One of the very few Tex-Mex places in town had made it, and it was very much like home. It was really good cake.

After dinner, we changed venues for something that I actually quite adore now, and I know it's because I'm asian in my soul. Karaoke. Some of my friends had to go on home, but 10 of us went to a karaoke place and got a room. We proceeded to sing horribly for an hour and a half or so. Songs including (but not limited to) "Stayin' Alive," "My Girl," "Like a Virgin," "Back in the USSR," "Surfin' USA," "Lemon Tree (?)," "I'm So Excited," "Wild Thing," and a few Korean hiphop songs made our wee hours of the morning amusing to say the least. It ended with my very special version of "The Macarena," which, it turns out, is mostly in Spanish. As luck would have it, I'm actually quite talented at pseudo-rapping Spanish lyrics to a song that spawned the bane of dance's existence for years.

"¡Dale a tu cuerpo alegia, Macarena!"

I got to bed at 2. It was a really fun birthday with neither strippers nor booze. However, I did eat a fish-shaped waffle thing that had a sweet bean paste inside. It was bought on the street under a bridge. It was delicious, by the way. Also, a Korean bought me a figurine of a bull covered entirely in tiny seashells. I also got a piggybank that is a little boy cowboy. An Indonesian classmate gave that to me. It's adorable. Asians give the best nonsequitir gifts.

Today I hung out for a while with Butterbean's family. We had lunch after International. I went alone, but I saw them there. Speaking of, during the collection, a woman sang "O Happy Day," and my day actually became extraordinarily happy. She was incredible. I'm glad I had shaken her hand eariler in the morning. On the way out I want to tell her how much I loved the song, but she was talking to a Canadian about a record producer friend-of-a. I'm glad. I'd buy it.
So I went with the family to retrieve a very important stuffed lion from a restaurant, and then we were off to McDonald's Store, as the elder blonde kid calls it. He fell asleep, though, so we went to Sizzler instead. It was really good, and it was considered day three of my birthday extravaganza. You know what I love about Sizzler? It has the best salad bar I've seen in Beijing. It's really a very good salad bar. The food was great, too.

After the Sizzler lunch wound down, I decided to part ways with the family and cross the street to a different Starbucks! I know. I'm a walking urban college cliche. I studied a good bit, though, and before I got online. I also eavesdropped as some people talked about international adoption. A woman who was in here works with an orphanage about an hour away, and she was talking to two gentlemen who do work in developing countries. It was such a cool conversation, but I had to pretend to be reading or something, because I didn't want to butt in. It makes me glad to see that there are people out there working to protect the widows and orphans. That's something that gives me hope.

I'm out of battery and story and coffee. I guess it's time to go home.

T

p.s. I know how I talk about places in this city as though anyone reading this knows where they are. One day, I'm going to draw a map of it and scan it in just so you'll have an idea of Beijing geography. It'll be excellent. But I haven't a scanner right now. All my geography is known in relation to the subway. Funny, no?