Adventures of the Traveling Brooke: *21*

5:57am:

*RING RING* *RING RING* What the heck...is my alarm going off already?? Oh wait...someone is calling me....this early on a Monday morning??? Eyes still closed I clumsily search for the phone and put it to my ear.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!"

I really don't remember much of the conversation I had with my dear family after that...lol. I just remember saying, "Thanks, I'm sleeping. Bye" or something like that. I had to work that day and I had stayed up to 1am trying to finish making all the origami notes for my 5th grade students, so I wanted to get in as much sleep as possible. But I was super happy to talk to my family :).

At school my classes sang me Happy Birthday and the volunteer librarian gave me a way cute birthday card --------------------->

Her name is Aki and her husband is the art teacher at that school. We started teaching at the same time and her English is very good. She translates children's books! We switched e-mails so hopefully we will at least be "Christmas Card" friends for years to come! I was so happy to have met her.

The night before, the Saito family (my adopted Japanese family) called me and asked what my plans were for my birthday. Since I hadn't really planned on anything, they invited me over for dinner. So I went straight from school (which had been really fun--I was done with my hardest class...yay!) to their house. We had SOO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love them soo much. We are definitely going to be life-long family. Yep!

To start off we made my birthday cake ASIAN style! Which means that is is light and sweet without being grossly sugary. Here are some pictures...we had such a great time:

We used angel food cake :)

Sister Saito bought the butter-cream roses because "Brookeちゃんの imageはroses!"

(That means something like in her mind I am a rose)

We had so much fun ^_^

Finished product, complete with 21 candles!

After we'd finished making the cake we went right into eating it!! Lol, after blowing out all the candles that is. It took me like three tries to blow them all out since I was laughing soo hard. Good thing I don't even remember what I wished for! Hehehe, good times. I am grateful it was angel food cake because they gave HUGE slices!

They tried me to get me to eat the whole chocolate centerpiece, but I made them eat some too!

They had put strawberries and bananas in the center...soo yummy!!!

Then after digesting and playing around for awhile, we made the COOLEST dinner EVER!

TAKOYAKI

たこ焼

First Your Equipment:

Second Your Ingredients:

Oh, P.S. Tako = Octopus :P

You grease the holes with oil, pour in some batter and then fill them up with whatever you'd like! It was soo much fun!!! We made LOTS, look!!!

The white squares are "mochi"-- pounded rice. YuMmY!

Suction Cups!

Add a little takoyaki sauce and your in business!!

We ate sooo many...I lost track. But about halfway through Sister Saito left and when she came back this is what she gave me:

As my dear friend Liz pointed out, they are Eggsians! Mauahaha :)

Hands-down the cutest food item I've seen in Japan!! And delicious too.

I think they were quail eggs!

*Rie and I *

We had such a great time together and they really helped me to have a great birthday!!! We just giggled and had fun until about nine pm. Then Sister Saito gave me these and said they were for breakfast :) How cute!!!

It was such a great day!!

But it wasn't over yet!!! The next day my dear Tongan friend Api Fifita had asked me to meet up with her to talk to the an investigator friend with the missionaries. So I went to the church but the doors were locked. Then she showed up and and called the missionaries to see where they were. She said they were going to be half an hour late (with her friend) and since it was snowing I believed her. Right by the church are a few restaurants and so we thought we'd grab a bite to eat before they came. There is a McDonald's and that is where I thought we were going, but she kept walking and we ended up at Sizzlers! I was like, whoa, this is a little nice to be just popping into! But I was pretty excited since I never eat meat at home (since it is expensive...haha).

We go in, sit down, and she is like, oh, I have to go to the bathroom. That is when I should have started being suspicious about the whole thing, but I wasn't. Lol, I am quite gullible! She let made me order this:

Hehehe, I just looked up the Japanese site and found the exact dish!! YAY, go Brooke! Api got this:

I just figured that since the day before had been my birthday she was giving me this dinner as a present, but it never occurred to me it wasn't anything but a coincidence....hmmmm, silly Brooke. But boy was it good! Plus we got the salad bars with the dinner and it was just heavenly! We swapped a scallop for some lobster and it was all just soo yummy. We just kept talking and I was like, man, where are those missionaries??? Then next thing I knew out came the crew and they sang Happy Birthday to me in English--soo cute!!!!!!!! They had a piece of cheese cake (with a candle in it), a card and a present and that is when I finally figured out I'd been set up!!! Hahaha, so I blew out the candle and they took this picture: