HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!

YAY!!!! It was my Birthday...lol I sounds very happy right now...I am normally not as happy about getting older. At least since being over 25. This bday, I thought would be especially hard because it will be my last year in my 20s and I wasn't with my family. But the Father showered me with love! from my friends and family back in Texas to my awesome friends and new family in Wuhan! I could not have been blessed with a more wonderful group of friends here. They have been such a blessing to me and I am continually blown away by the Love of my Father!

This is my Dear friend, and Chinese mother, Linda! She is also an English Teacher at my University. She and I have been friends since the second month I came. I invited her to coffee because I really wanted friends and she spoke great English and seemed really open. Well, She has been the biggest blessing in my life. I feel like she and her husband have adopted me. They are such sweet people. She and I eat lunch together almost every week and since November her husband has opened his own coffe shop, Gee Coffee:-) So I frequently stop by the shop to have coffee and visit with them. She treated me to birthday lunch on my birthday. I had to teach all morning but rode my bike to the shop right after to meet her:-) She has become one of my best friends in Wuhan.

After eating with Linda I ride to Starbucks to have a wonderful coffee date with my dear friend and neighbor Michelle. She is also a teacher here and we live right next to each other. I don't go to starbucks very ofter at all. This was only my second time since coming here. It is quite expensive so I normally go to other shops...but it is the best:-) Michelle treated me to a wonderful drink and treat! It was so much fun!!

Then, right after that, my friends Jacqueline and Rebecca took me to dinner(I know it looks like I ate and drank all day...because I did!). This is a great little place we call "the spagetti place". It is actually a chinese steak house but we always get spagetti:-) It was such a refreshing time of visiting and being my my sweet friends! I love these girls very much!!!

Then I rode my bike back to school for English Corner. Every Tuesday is English Corner and it just happened to be the last one of the year...it was so much fun! The word spread that it was my birthday and everyone sang to me. It was so special!

This is Tony, he is a dear "brother" and friend I met the first week I arrived. He came and brought me a book full of Chinese fellowship songs:-) AHHHH I was so excited to be able to learn fellowship songs in Chinese! I was able to help he and and a group of his friends with a special song to perform at their fellowship Christmas event. I was able to help the pianist with her part and teach the others some different harmonies...they were so amazing to try to learn these parts even though they weren't musical:-) The day after the even the piano player texted me to say that her parents had come. They had been very against her attending this type of thing but on that day(Christmas Eve) they believed!!!!!! Oh what an amazing Christmas for her!!!! Such an awesome Father!!!!

This is a view of English Corner... I wrote a few popular Christmas carols on the board and was allowed to teach them to the students:-) It was so much fun!!!!

This is Sunshine...He is one of my students from my sports major class. He always came to see me at English Corner. Someone told him it was my birthday so he prepared a special song to sing for me, "Yellow" by Coldplay. He doesn't speak much English at all but he sang it perfectly:-) It meant so much to me!

The weekend after my birthday, some of my closest friends gave me a surprise bday party:-) They took me in a taxi to start the day and we ended up at HORSE ISLAND!!!!!!!!! OMG....I couldn't have dreamed of a better gift. Horse Island is an island in the middle of the Yangtze River, in Wuhan that has horses to ride!!!! We arrived there and I was soooooo excited:-) In the picture beside me is Mandi, Kirk, Ryan, Jacqueline and LiPing.

It really is an island so they were waiting to take us across the river on a boat...a very small boat:-) The guys were loving the big barge in our way:-)

These girls are so amazing!!!

When we got to the island this is what we found...it looked like it should have been called "Chicken island"! There were lots more chickens than horses:-) The family that lives on the island, lives in this little place.

They made us rest and have tea first...very Chinese:-) It was so fun! I don't think my friends knew how much I liked chickens and farms until we got there. LOL, now they make fun of me...all the time:-( But apparently I am fun to make fun of:-)

We were able to ride 2 horses. So we took turns! Kirk and I went first...these were very small horses!!! But I LOVED every minute of it!!!

Horseback riding is on of my most favorite things to do...and we got to ride on an Island..in China! it was like a dream come true for this horse lovin', China lovin' girl:-)

So next they still wouldn't tell me what we were going to do...but we got in a bread van(a taxi that looks like a van) and headed off to....Dinner!!!! We went to place called "Grandma's Kitchen". It was full of amazing western food that had great MEXICAN FOOD! i can't believe how special they made this for me!

It is a very crazy tradition for my friend Nathan, but he always gets the birthday person a "special" hat. He makes them close their eyes and he puts it on...you can't look until the night is over...lol If only I had known how CRAZY the hat was that he got for me!!! When we got to dinner many friends were there to celebrate with us, and I wore this hat the whole time....The chinese ppl were looking at me VERY strange!!!! After I saw it I totally knew why!

I loved the restaurant! It was full of cowboy stuff:-) As we were leaving I asked where my dear friend Becca had gone. My friends assured me she was down stairs and we would meet her there. Well, to my surprise the birthday wasn't over....

When i walked through the doors of the mall to enter the outside, Becca was there with the music playing as told me the last birthday surprise was a country dance for me:-) I almost cried! There are not many things I love more than everything this Birthday celebration entailed...and to top it off with line dancing on the sidewalk of the mall was incredible! We had so much fin dancing the night away:-) Oh and many Chinese people had a blast watching us:-)

This is Becca:-) She made this amazing dessert and then had all of the girls to her house for an awesome sleepover:-) She is such a blessing and I am so grateful for her and her family!!!

Needless to say, this was a birthday I will NEVER forget:-) All my sweet friends have no idea what a blessing they are to me. Each one has touched my life during my time here and I am in constant amazement of how the Father provides what we need at the perfect time:-) I think 29 isn't going to be so bad after all:-)