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happy birthday

Today I am 29 years old. I don't mind being a 29 year old. It has it's advantages, I'm sure.

It's only 7:33am so I don't really know how my actual birthday is going to be but yesterday was great. After a meeting here at home with the other Seminary English teachers, Phil told me that Terri (coworker) wanted to see me the office. I knew something was up and when I walked into the office everyone was standing there, Terri was holding a cake with candles, and they all started singing "Happy Birthday". I wasn't surprised that they did something but I was surprised to have everyone there at that moment singing to me. I'm enjoying a piece of the spice cake right now with coffee. They also made me a really sweet card that was very encouraging.

Terri and Buddy(dog) came over around 5pm last evening so that Phil and I could go out. I knew we were going to a restaurant and I knew we should dress a little nice. We both looked nice but we couldn't resist wearing our sandals. Sport sandals are nice, right? So we caught a taxi to Hangkou (across the river from us) and I still didn't know where we were going but Phil seemed very confident and we had a great ride over - took us about 30mins. Once downtown, the driver started looking at Phil and Phil told him he could pull over anywhere. We got out and I kept saying, "How do you know where we are?" We had never been to that part of Hangkou. Phil just takes my hand and starts leading me down the street like he'd been there a thousand times before. We crossed the street and ended up at the Ramada. The Ramada is a tall beautiful hotel with doormen, foutains, WONDERFUL bathrooms, and this romantic restaurant called the Rose Restaurant. So that was our destinations. I had one of the best meals of my life and I can't even start to explain the depths of delight that my dessert brought. You'll just have to go to the restuarant yourself and order the chocolate fondant.

After supper we used the bathrooms, again. I'm serious, they were really wonderful. We also went to the top of the hotel to check out their revolving restuarant. It was very cool and would be another fun date. Then we walked around Hangkou checking out shops and just enjoying the hussle and bussle. We came home to find Madeleine sound asleep after a fun night of playing with Terri and Buddy. Terri is wonderful and we really like Buddy, too. So, a good time was had by all.

This morning Phil is feeding Maddie and I was going to go for a jog but Phil talked me out of it because the air quality looks horrible. When your husband talks you out of doing something that will make your body look better, you should listen. So I decided to blog. PengAiYi is coming soon to clean and then later we may go back to HangKou to buy DVDs and eat at Mr. Donut. Rhoda (coworker) will go with us. She's our age, a lot of fun, and knows HongKou so we'll actually be able to find Mr. Donut this time.

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