Birthday Week.

It has been an amazing, busy, and awesome week. I'm going to try to go through the past week as quickly as possible as I have homework left, but I know I'm leaving really cool stuff out!

There are four birthdays this week. There was my birthday on the 1st, Michelle's volunteer's birthday on the 2nd, David's birthday on the 3rd (today) and Yumi's birthday on the 4th. Partying, cake, and celebration are in order for all the birthdays, so you can only imagine what it has been like attempting to juggle school and play this past week. In two words: pretty difficult.

Because the typhoon was being such a bad ass on Sunday, the school gave us Monday off. A lot of people took the day to relax, shop, and peruse, since the typhoon actually moved out Sunday night and we were greeting on Monday by the obligatory "bitch rain." However, weathering the typhoon on Sunday had left me slightly sick on Monday, so I stayed in and drank fluids, fluids, fluids. People here are 100% awesome status; once word got out I was feeling slightly under the weather, I was inundated with congee, herbal teas, soups, medicines and all sorts of cure-alls. Thank you to all of you! Tuesday was... about the same. Wasn't about to take chances and be sick for my birthday on Wednesday, no siree. But we did go to Xi Men Ding to finally get some shopping done for Wednesday.

I was surprised at the huge crowd that came out for my birthday at midnight. Birthdays always freak me out because suddenly you're center of attention for a few hours and it freaks me out to have that many people watching me. Still, it is always nice to see so many people come out for a birthday, and I was very flattered! I was also very, very caked by Jenny and Chow, and then subsequently water-gunned down by Emma the RA. Cake + water is not the best mix in the world, but it was still 100% awesome.

With the girls after getting caked/hosed. I didn't take my camera along during my birthday celebration; I figured I could take the day off from lugging it around, thus I'm stealing this one from Brian Chow! Thanks Brian!

Wednesday was dinner at a Japanese restaurant (getting my salmon sashimi fix... gotta have it!) followed by clubbing at Mint. Mint is seriously the smallest club I could have ever imagined, and we got a great deal of people out for an amazing, awesome good time.

Me and the amazing David and Cris. David is celebrating his birthday today, two days after mine. Also he got kicked out of Mint for puking, but he doesn't remember where or how. He thus makes the night legen-wait for it-dary. This picture is from Wendy Eav, thanks Wendy!

The club is located directly underneath the Taipei 101. The entire night was pretty much perfect but one memory I know future me will not want to forget is coming out of the club at 4am, leaning back on the stairs with Jenny and Brian, and looking straight up at the 101. Awesome.

I also will not want to forget me freaking out about getting locked into the fifth floor that same night. But that's another story. Things I will want to forget: the morning after. Definitely, definitely.

Thursday we went to get foot massages after class. This place was baller and once again I am kicking myself for not taking my camera. The people here actually know how to massage your feet and basically it was 40 minutes of absolute nirvana.

We brought in David's birthday on midnight with an epic water fight. Water guns, cake, water bottles, Nalgene bottles, and, finally, BUCKETS were involved. It looked like a typhoon had passed through our floor, it was pretty amazing.

I think that pretty much sums up what I have been up to this past week. It's been packed and fun and I know that was relatively short given how much stuff I really have to pack in there but I have work to do! Zai jian!

-Justin

This picture is from the roof of Guo Qing on Thursday. I took it while Jenny, Brian and I played with fireworks under a bright, city-lit sky.