Birthday in China!

For those of you who don't know, yesterday was my birthday! That's September 20th - dates can be a little funky, and if you're on the west coast, it's still not the 21st yet. Which seems weird to me, because it's been the 21st for a whole 13 hours here. But I digress...

My friends here made sure it was a wonderful day! My class sang to me in Chinese, my friends wouldn't let me pay for lunch or dinner, and I got lots of birthday wishes from friends back in the states - thanks to those who wrote on my wall on Facebook!! I won't be able to respond until I return home, but funny thing - Facebook email notifications still work. I'm so glad I made sure those were enabled before I left... ;-)

Let's see...a few random birthday facts...
- Happy Birthday in Chinese is 祝你生日快乐 (祝 wish 你 you 生日 birthday 快乐 joyful: wish you a joyful birthday)
- The standard for cakes here is a bit different. Cakes are usually white on the inside, with a couple of layers, and with fruit on the inside. It's a little tasteless, but not bad at all!! The frosting on my cake was good too :)
- I was talking with my tutor yesterday about important birthdays - like in the U.S. 18 is important because you're considered an adult, and 21 is important because you can drink. We were also talking about at what age people are allowed to get married at. He was surprised that in the U.S. both men and women are allowed to marry at 18. Here, women are allowed to marry at age 20, and men are allowed to marry at age 22.
- If it's your birthday, it's considered good luck to eat noodles.

SunLi (our tour guide) introduced us to three Chinese college students when we first got here - Daniel, Cherry, and Ankora. All three were able to join me and the girls in my group for dinner to celebrate my birthday last night! It was soo much fun! My cake was shaped like a heart with chocolate icing :) I was sung to in English and Chinese (think the same tune, just translated), my Chinese friends ordered delicious food for us (some sweet and some spicy - and I did have noodles!), and we all had a wonderful time! I hope we'll be able to get together with Daniel, Cherry, and Ankora often!

That's all for now! Time to get back to studying...