i have to admit i was a little (okay, maybe a lot) bummed that i didn’t get a chance to celebrate my birthday in my usual style where i get all my friends together. i was going to pull together something for the following weekend, but it seemed like everybody was busy/not interested. in other words, as i’m sure most of us have felt at one time or another, the world had moved on and couldn’t care less about my petty needs.
despite the temporary feeling of neglect, a 34 year old must be mature enough to move on (am i really 34? how did that happen?). i had some really fun plans set for that Friday night – dinner with a friend and then hip hop dancing in Hongdae (really, really fun neighborhood that inspires either love or hate among people). all was right with the world once again…
friday afternoon, z comes into my classroom (yes i don’t work in an “office” anymore) and tells me that he really needs “to talk”. he asks me to cancel my dinner plans because he has to talk to me right away about something serious. z says my face expressed this look of horror – all i kept thinking was “fuck, what is this about now?”
after work, i’m just dreading whatever post-relationship talk we need to have. uggh, those are never fun. we’re walking towards his place and i keep trying to probe to get a sense of what to expect. is he mad at me? is he dating somebody new? what?? he just keeps saying that he wants to sit down before we talk.
he had left his umbrella at Ho Lee Chow (a really good chinese food place despite the awful name) at lunch so we walk there to retrieve it. suddenly, as we’re walking through the restaurant, i realize that there’s a whole table of people i know. and then, because I’m slow and not expecting it, i start to realize that they’re all there for my BIRTHDAY as everyone’s yelling SURPRISE! every teacher from work somehow managed to slip out after work and get there before us (z took me the long way in a circuitous route). being my non-eloquent self, all i could say was “i’m so embarrassed.” but, obviously, i was all these other happy emotions too. they were so happy that i was surprised…it’s a pretty hard thing to do when all 15 people work with me and i see them on a daily basis.
they filled me in all the background planning – the hiding in different classrooms to figure stuff out, the trip to the bakery to pick out the girliest pink cake they could find, the brainstorm of possible excuses to get me there (that’s where the “i need to talk” scenario was generated).
what can i say? it was one of the sweetest things that somebody has done for me. i have been so, so lucky to have such special friends, no matter where i am in the world. this year, it was especially significant since there were moments where it was so hard to be somewhere different. hopefully soon, i’ll be posting a page about all my friends in Seoul so all those at home can see the family that i’ve made here.
then, it was time for cake – a really, really girly cake with pink frosting and white whipped cream and a ribbon around it. strawberry tiramisu. yummy! then, off for chilling in the park with our drinks of choice and dancing in hongdae until 5 in the morning.
i’m a very lucky girl.
