Last weekend I celebrated my 19th birthday in China with the other volunteers in the city... reminding me of how overdue a new blogpost is!
My actual birthday is the 23rd May and China made it a very memorable one indeed! My birthday fell just over the 3 month mark of living here, so it was great reminder of just how settled I was in China.
At midnight I started getting texts from students who were still up in their dorms playing with their phones and my absolute favourite birthday message of the day goes to a fabulous student called Gin. He loves Lady Gaga and his message was…
CLASSIC!!!
Amazing guy, tons of personality, he makes me laugh every day!
I then went to class the next day after a breakfast of “dan ta” (egg custard tarts!) where my class started to sing to me – first in English, then in Chinese! They drew a cake for me on the board hidden behind some paper and I couldn’t bring myself to rub it off, so I just drew around it the whole lesson!
My volunteer partner Zoe had taken the liberty of writing this sign up the evening before whilst I was in our flat…
“Tomorrow is JiaoJiao (nickname from my Chinese name, Xiao Yunjiao) (Natalie’s) birthday. Please wish her a happy birthday!”
During English corner, some students came round our flat and I opened a parcel sent from my lovely friend Victoria from England. I shared out some of the chocolate, but the main present was this:
Possibly, the BEST present to have sent to a person in China! My students translated the message for me after laughing at my attempt at reading the characters and were very impressed with the present.
Then, Mona / Zhang Zhemei (one my students) pulled out a beautiful present!! Polka-dot wrapping paper with a big blue bow on top, the prettiest present I’ve ever received and the most suprising at that! I didn’t think any of my students would give me anything like this! It now sits on my bedside table here and I’ll definitely be bringing it back to England for my University desk.
A pencil holder with “My Neighbour Totoro” characters, a Japanese movie Mona and I both love.
In the evening, the English department changed their meetings around so that they could take me out on my birthday. After a banquet dinner, we went to KTV / Karaoke and where we had cake (and lots of singing!). Some of my foreign friends came too and I was lucky enough to hear happy birthday in Spanish (as well as Chinese / English!) from an Argentine friend who’s another English Teacher. We were back after midnight (where I found a bundle of birthday cards pushed under the door!) and I definitely feel I celebrated my 19th in plenty of style (and thankfully, without too much 35% rice wine and Chinese beer).
Last but not least… Zoe’s present to me was an amazing book full of photos and messages from all my friends at Minzhong 民中 (National Minorities High School) and photos of all our little backpacker weekends away. The best present ever!!!!!!!!!
But there’s an amusing twist… the book she bought is hilariously a notebook for people learning a style of kung-fu that helps men become women. The first student who signed the book explained this to her and it was apparently of much amusement to everyone thereafter. Even after 3 months in China, you can definitely keep finding out new things!
A card from all the volunteers :)
We had a birthday celebration in the big city... people trekked 16 hour hard seat train journeys to get there!
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