Birthday Beginnings

My birthday has past - it was September 24th and I'm so pleased to say that it was one of the best moments of my life to date. You would think that living in rural China would make things difficult to celebrate one's birthday.  I'm happy to tell you that for the second year now, I've had an amazing birthday.

This birthday started way too early. September 23rd was actually another fellow, Justin's birthday and when midnight came around - I was tired and eager to go to bed because the next morning would be the beginning of our first professional development (PD) conference of the year. Blah. On my birthday of all days.

I went to bed, woke up too early, got dressed, was grumpy, and then continued on the entire morning in the conference. During lunch, Monica and I went to a place that made Taiwanese flavored crepes and behind the counter was a 9 year old girl. We had found a stalker. A fourth grade girl who never introduced herself made our crepes and then proceeded to walk next door and peer into the windows of our training room for the next four hours during our training. ENTERTAINING indeed. In our last session, she got even ballsier and started playing with us in our training.

Her pants were fake Gucci. and she hated Tom Hoffecker.

She only wanted to be in the picture with Phoebe because she thought Phoebe was pretty. She called Tom a "hei hei hei hei (count them.. 4) gorilla."

She's pushing him away in this picture.

and this is her running away from him. Among the other nicknames that she handed out that day - "black gorilla" - just one hei for Axel.

White fox for Tim Worm.
Little Ant for Chris.
Dragon Lady for Sasha.

She brightened my day. Thanks, little Taiwanese crepe maker!