Another Year Older, Another Year Wiser?

My birthday (weekend) showed me just how lucky I am.

If you don’t follow me on any other platform, then you may not know that my birthday recently came and passed.

The 21st fell on a Monday this year, and considering I am a “real” adult now, I spent the whole day working. While my students were sweet (and one even passed the first, and only, vocabulary quiz in he has ever passed in his whole time attending my academy as an improvised present to me), the true celebrating happened two days earlier.

Weeks ago, as we were toasting our completion of our company’s training week, my good friend Aly asked me when my birthday was. It came more from a place of teasing than of interest, but when I informed her that it was close (2 months away at that point), her eyes lit up.

Apparently, Aly loves birthdays. And I mean, LOVES birthdays.

From that day onward, Aly planned out my birthday party. Luckily, all of her planning panned out better than I could have ever hoped for.

Not to complain in any way, but at Harv, birthdays weren’t always that big of deal. Mine was especially tricky to celebrate because it fell smack dab in the middle of midterms. So, with everyone up to their noses in studying, we usually had a celebratory dinner away from the dining halls (a rare occurrence) and exchanged simple gifts.

This year, however, no one had midterms. And with everyone being “real” adults, we all had some semblance of “free time”. Aly capitalized on that and planned an amazing party at an awesome bar in Itaweon, the foreign district of Seoul. She knew the owners, and convinced them to let her deck out a corner of the bar in streamers and balloons. She brought together (almost) all of my favorite people in the city for a night of drinking, darts, and dancing.

The whole night was a joy from beginning to end. We did all of the stupid stuff you do on peoples’ birthdays: take crazy group pictures with all of the props available to us, drink absurdly named cocktails, and take over the music suggestion box with only our favorite songs.

Aly also managed to convince them to blare the Happy Birthday song not once but TWICE, and somehow pull out the best tasting cake I have ever had from thin air.

The Koreans in attendance added their own fun traditions to the mix, which included destroying me at darts and smearing the purple cake icing all over my face.

All in all, it was definitely one of my favorite birthday parties I have ever had, rivaled only by the party my parents held for 22 2nd graders (they are truly dedicated, loving, supportive parents because that party was, for lack of a better word, HELLISH for the adults involved and HEAVEN for the hyped-up kiddos).

Since birthdays mark the passage of time and usually prompt people to delve into retrospection, I suppose now I need to talk about the pieces of wisdom I have picked up over the past 12 months. While there are so many things I could talk about, I think my birthday weekend reminds me of the most important thing I have learned:

I am so immensely lucky to be living the life that I am living. I have been blessed with so many extraordinary opportunities, so many experiences. And as I watched my friends singing and giggling along to the weird techno-remix of Happy Birthday, I understood that I do not walk through all of these lucky moments alone.

What has always made my life so wonderful has been the people that have surrounded me every step of the way.

So, to all of you who have shared my journey with me: thank you for 23 years of love, light, laughs, hugs, kisses, tears, sweat, giggles, wiggles, and everything in between.

Here’s to many, many more.

(Also, here is an assortment of my favorite photos from the month of October. Enjoy!)