Happy Birthday

Dear long lost friends and fam,
Today's my birthday! It isn't quite the same without you all. It's been really strange, I just realized it that my bday was coming up about 3 days ago and since then Bhadri's been working hard trying to get me excited about my day. We've been at school since around 11:00 and will be here until 9:00 tonight--so it's hard to enjoy a birthday that's spent almost entirely at work.

But no complaints here. Bhads worked very hard on my gifts and I was so surprised and delighted when he gave them to me this morning. A beautiful porcelain tea cup (it'll be my cup...we have pretty crappy and tiny cups for morning beverages courtesy of our landlords), a book I've wanted to read for a while, and the biggun, a Bhadri-made book stamp. His design was inspired by the 1970s Ukrainian book marks we found in a little antique shop in Lviv last year. They are basically the book owner's seal or symbol to insert into their books. So he made one for me with lots of Bethanie-symbolism and it's gorgeous. It was so thoughtful, he always is, and I love it.

Another great bday present is our buddy Patrice from Ireland, who is staying with us for about 4 days. She's about to leave the continent for a year long trip in Australia, so she came to visit us before she set sail. It's so wonderful to have her here, especially during my birthday. She's family now and I really miss my family! She brought so many goodies with her from Ireland! Two huge bags of Taytos, 6 packages of good chocolate, a couple of nice frames, and even our old books from Dingle. She also brought a scarf made by her mom Patricia for me for my birthday--it's beautiful and it makes me so happy that her mom knitted each row. Booster loves having her here--she plays with him constantly and even sneaks him bits of her tasty dinners, much to Bhad's dismay. He'll be sad, like us, when she's gone.

The three of us are going out for pizza and beer tonight after work. We heard about a place called Oregano and we're gonna try it out. Hopefully some of the other teachers from work will want to go out tonight too. Holly and Claire, two of the new teachers here, got me the most delicious chocolates and instigated a card-signing for me, too. Very cool.

So in five minutes, we're off to teach our first of three slots today. Hopefully they'll go birthday-smoothly and we'll be off for pizza in no time. Please have a wonderful day for me and grab a slice of over-the-top-sweet-frostinged grocery store cake with assorted color icing for me!