On December 17th (last Thursday) I turned 27, and to celebrate Derek and I made a bunch of plans for a busy, fun day with friends. Of course, almost everyone we know here had already gone home for Christmas, but a few close friends were still in town, which made for nice, small party, and left more food and cheesecake to around :) In the morning we watched from the front windows as the dark clouds above the castle released a ton of hail on the streets, and then it started to snow. First there was just tiny snowflakes, but then it turned into massive puffy white snowflakes. This was the first real snowfall this winter, and I swear it was just for my birthday, to make things feel like home.
The first item on my day's agenda was lunch out with Derek. We rarely go out to eat, so this is a big treat for me. We chose the Red Fort, with its great Indian buffet and an equally great student discount. Our Norwegian friends introduced us to the restaurant at the end of August and its become our new favourite place to eat out. (We've also recently started making vegetarian curries at home once a week, which have been turning out great.) Anyway, we lucked out getting a seat within 10 minutes of arriving because a table for 2 opened up. The place was pretty busy with office Christmas parties, and a group of 3 waiting ahead of us gave up and left. The group of 4 students ahead of us eventually had to seat themselves after waiting half an hour and watching other groups who came in later get seated. The food was excellent as usual -- the chicken korma is probably my favourite, the pakoras were great and I love the naan bread. So a very good lunch overall.
Two of my friends were coming over at 2:30, but before that Derek gave me a lovely pair of furry mauve slippers which make me feel like I have muppet feet (a great feeling!). My friends came over, and we were able to time it so that I could introduce them to my mum over Skype using our webcams, which was very neat. Then we were off to the bowling alley, where we settled on two games. There was a large group of me taking up a ton of space next to our lane and restricting access to the range of bowling balls, so our guys had to use what they could find until the group left and they could raid their stash. I was pretty rusty and did get off to a great start, but some of Derek's tips came back to me. Around 8 frames into the first game the lights suddenly went out, blue lights and some crazy rotating and flashing lights came on and it became much harder to concentrate and even aim.
Derek, who grew up bowling in leagues, found that he had some competition from my friend from Japan. It turns out bowling in Japan is probably as popular for teens as going to the movies, so he'd had a lot of experience as well. Then there was my other friend who had next to no experience bowling. She told me that in Germany they play a similar game, but its not the same. However, beginner's luck had her right up there with the boys in points for the entire first game, and she finished only a few points short of Derek, who'd come in second. And me, I came in last in both games, which is my usually place when bowling. I never mind. And I got a strike each game, so I was very proud of that!
After bowling we all came back to ours for pizza and cake. The day before I had made my mum's blackforest cheesecake for the first time and it looked great. It tasted great too, and won rave reviews from my friends. I always find shopping here using a recipe from back home a bit frustrating, because we just don't have access to the same selection, or even the same kind of items sometimes. For example, I always have to make my own cookie crumbs for my crusts, when back home I'd just buy a box of crumbs. The big challenge this time was trying to find the cherry topping. Normally the topping is just spoonfuls of cherry pie filling from a can. I hadn't realised that fruit pies are very much an American thing, and so it'd be rare to find such an item pre-made. Luckily, in Somerfield, one of the larger grocery stores around, Derek spotted some dzem wisniowy (cherry jam) in the Polish food section, so we decided to give that a try. Well, it was perfect! A slightly different texture, but exactly the flavour I was going for.
All in all it was an excellent birthday. With bowling and my usual cheesecake it was very much like the birthday parties I had when I was young. However, one other thing happened that was also common to my childhood birthdays that I wasn't planning on -- I got sick. By Friday night my typical deep chest cough had returned, and this morning I was given a prescription for antibiotics to use in case things get worse over Christmas and I develop my usual case of bronchitis for Christmas. Now I really do feel like I'm a kid again!
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