You don't have to know me for very long (longer or shorter depending on how close to September 15th we met...) to know that I love my birthday more than most people my age. Shoot, I'd hold my birthday enthusiasm up to any kid you know and come out on top. Your own personal holiday? What's not to love? So although it may seem childish to want to fill you in on what I've done for my birthday this year, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
The 15th was last Tuesday, and you may remember that on Monday we posted about the tropical storm that blew through here. Those mighty winds and torrential rains swept all the heat and stickiness out of the air, so I had the much-appreciated pleasure of not sweating on my birthday! Tuesday was not as stormy, but we had rain on and off and a delightful breeze, so I went through the whole day not feeling hot. I'll take that as a birthday present from God!
We had been planning to visit one of the high-end resorts around here and just see what we could find to do/eat/drink, but because of the weather, that plan is on hold. We might get to do that tomorrow morning, and my birthday celebrating won't be officially over until we have, but on my birthday instead of relaxing on a beach, we went oven shopping! We'd been deliberating about whether or not we would try to do without an oven while we're here, but we came into unity about it when I mentioned to Tim that we wouldn't be able to make Christmas pies without one. He was willing to take a pass on cake and hold off on cookies; he was ready to say no to home-baked pizza, but it turns out that "pie" was the magic word. So we went to an appliance shop and laid out 1.3 million for the largest oven we could find. It's got a rotisserie fork I'll enjoy figuring out, and a convection setting, but it's barely large enough to hold a 9x13 pan. That's okay, though, because I don't have a 9x13 pan!
All this talk about ovens leads me to my best birthday present of all: a chef! I am super excited about this one. Her name is Lan, and she recently moved back to Da Nang after living in Italy for 8 years. Her husband is Italian, and not only has Lan been trained as a chef in Italy and worked in restaurants there, she's also been trained by her Italian mother-in-law to cook homestyle Italian food. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have thought I would come to Vietnam to have a Vietnamese woman come over and fill my fridge with Italian food. I have definitely dreamed of having a chef at work in my kitchen, but this whole thing takes on an even more dreamlike quality when you make it an Asian chef making Italian food. I'm just tickled about the whole thing. She'll be coming twice a week, at least for now, and she cooks for about 3 hours and makes about 3 complete meals. I complimented her on how much she was able to get done in that amount of time, and she just laughed and said in the restaurant she would have done much more. She's planning to open a restaurant here, so we don't know how long she'll be available to us, but for now I am just loving that we get to do this. The fact that she started on my birthday is the cherry on top. We got to sit down to a lovely pork roast with rosemary potatoes, asparagus bundles wrapped in ham, and a very tasty tossed salad. (I know you're all dying to know but are afraid to ask: she charges us $10 plus ingredients.)
After oven shopping and before dining, I got to have a free haircut from an American girl who's part of a team that's passing through. It just feels nice to have a haircut on your birthday, right? And after lunch Michael took me out for bubble tea. We recently discovered a place that has dophin-shaped jellies, along with hearts and butterflies, and if that doesn't sound like magical birthday food, I don't know what does. It was pouring rain most of the time we were there, and we enjoyed watching the rain and the traffic from the second floor balcony.
The key to living your birthday to the fullest is to take every good thing that happens in the surrounding days as being a birthday present. Using that method, our landlord gave me a hot water heater in my bathroom for my birthday! Until now we've had showers that were whatever temperature the water happened to be at the time. Our water is in a tank on the roof, and so when the weather is hot and sunny, the shower you take in the middle of the day is the warmest. Not hot, but a pleasantly warm temperature. The morning shower was cooler, but not unbearable. We were perfectly satisfied with this method at first, but as soon as the weather turned a little cooler and we didn't have the sun beating down on the water tank, our morning showers especially got a little nippy! Now we have water heaters in each bathroom, and we can choose to take whatever temperature is coming out naturally, or add some hot to it. My first hot shower in over a month was a happy birthday moment. I'm sure I didn't turn it as hot as I would have in the States, but it was nice to be able to choose the temperature.
Also this week we hired a girl to help us clean once a week. Our neighbor had just hired her, but she didn't want her every day. She "persuaded" us to hire her for one day a week so we could keep her fully employed and happy in the neighborhood. It was a humbling experience for me. I mean, I love the idea of someone else doing my cleaning, but it's still a little embarrassing knowing they're seeing all your dirt--yes, there was a bit of a gasp when she swept out what was under the couch. I don't have a high standard in the US, but I don't exactly know what the standard is here, so I don't know what she's thinking as she goes through each of our rooms. I do know that we're supposed to be doing our floors every day, and we definitely don't. Like all Asian countries I know about, there's an expectation here that you will remove your shoes upon entering any house. However, unlike China, it's not the host's responsibility to provide slippers for you, so every floor is supposed to be barefoot clean at all times. That's taking some getting used to since we do have 4 flights of stairs to keep swept! I swallowed my pride and remembered that it's birthday week and accepted all of the cleaning as a birthday present. I really am grateful for the help. So are the kids!
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| This is my neighbor, Thu. She's a high school teacher, and would you believe the beautiful dress she's wearing is her school uniform? |
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| Birthday Mochi Sweets These are the chocolate creams of Asia--delicious chewy bundles with fruity or chocolaty fillings. |
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