Zhu Ni Sheng Ri Kuai Le

I wish that I could say that my 24^th birthday was the best ever, and that I did something so amazing because it was my first birthday celebrated in Shanghai. Unfortunately, it ended up being a pretty horrible, actually… Well I shouldn’t say the whole day was horrible, it started off perfectly.

It began just like any other day. As I got ready for work, my sister and niece called me on skype to wish me a happy birthday. Then I headed into work. In the morning, my phonics lesson was interrupted when Ms. Shi came into my class with a dozen purple roses. They were so beautiful and so completely unexpected that I was absolutely blown away. The note attached read, “I will not let half of the world stop me from doing something special for you on your birthday…” I know, amazing right! My kids loved the flowers. They kept saying, “They are the most beautiful thing I ever saw” (and they pretty much were). That afternoon, Mr. Morgan bought a big cake for me and we had a big birthday celebration with my class and the toddler class and a couple teachers. The kids all sang Happy Birthday to me in both Chinese and English, and they gave me a huge card that was signed by the whole school.

After school, the Courtneys and I had planned on dinner and some drinks. We ended up at an Italian restaurant close by called De Marco’s. It was a fabulous restaurant with pretty good Italian food. At the end of dinner, as we discussed where to head next for drinks, I started to not feel so great. We were all tired, so we ended up heading back to the apartment for a fun night in with wine and games. In the taxi, I started to feel worse – just completely nauseous. Once we got home (around 8:30 pm), I began vomiting and continued to vomit every twenty minutes for the next 12 hours. It was absolutely awful! It was very strange though because I never had a fever and I did not feel sick in any other way besides the vomiting. I could not decide whether I had picked up some kind of stomach bug or if it was something bad that I ate. I still really don’t know, but it sucked nonetheless.

I had planned to treat myself to a massage and a little bit of shoe shopping to celebrate my birthday, but I spent the next two days and the rest of the weekend lying in bed forcing myself to eat crackers and drink water – letting my body recover from being run over by the bus!