The Big Birthday Blog

24 years!

Next year, whenever I rent a car, I will not have to pay that pesky extra insurance fee! Now that will deserve a party itself.

So my birthday fell on a Thursday this year. Here are Princeton in Beijing....Thursday are VERY busy...since every friday we have a huge written exam plus a major presentation based on an essay we turned in earlier in the week.

So, I was surprised to have any festivities at all - let alone all the fun that we had at my Birthday dinner right here at a restaurant near campus.

But, my buddies surprised me with a cake...and then a dinner (dessert first is the way to go!)

The cake itself was awesome. (above left). At first glance it looked like an Easter Cake with two cute icing bunny rabbits on top. They had the cake-makers put my Chinese name in icing.

In this left pic, my buddy with the Chinese name "Feng Tao" is eating one of two icing bunny rabbits.

In the next shot, you see my b-day surprise buddies chowing down on the cake on my bed...please don't make me sleep with spilled cake guys...


Then we all went out to one of our favorite restaurants near campus. We had a small discussion about whether we should be imbibing any beer the day before an exam. The compromise: some beer, some Sprite, water, and tea are all at the table to fulfill all of our celebratory and caffeine needs.

From picture #3 of RenZhiDa & FengTao, (left) can you guess who was voting for beer?

....and needless to say, no birthday is complete without a fish-face competition between myself and ChengZiLuo, and a dinner table full of clean plates:

Happy Birthday Indeed!!