I celebrated my 30^th birthday at the end of May in a way I hadn’t thought I would – I pulled out my wallet and bought all the ingredients needed for a spaghetti and pad thai dinner for my coworkers and their family at UHDP, disinfection about thirty people in total.  After the monthly staff meeting, Gurd and I hopped onto a motorcycle and drove into town (Fang) where we hit the Tesco Lotus supermarket (shiny and new, built to appease the increasingly Westernized appetites of northern Thais who are starting to enjoy the riches earned from commercial tangerine groves).  At the Lotus (or “Lotut”, as pronounced here in Thailand), I found a surprising number of goodies: Hershey’s unsweetened baking chocolate, Aussie butter, and Tim Tams (both local and imported).  I didn’t go insane (not yet…the Western urges for dark chocolate and chicken salad are slowly rearing their heads only now) but I did drop quite a bit of money, at least according to the spending habits of my co-workers.  At the local market, we had fun zipping around and ordering veggies, noodles, pork and palm sugar.  I felt like we went insane there with local goodies but at least the prices were a little more realistic!  Fortunately, my birthday is not everyday, so I don’t have to spend like a maniac all the time.  Shopping bags bulging, we zoomed back to the farm at UHDP to start prepping.

I usually play soccer in the evenings with the guys, but on my birthday night, I helped wash veggies and then mince ground beef with a cleaver.  Not with a meat grinder but a wooden board and a sturdy cleaver.  The beef came from a cow we had slaughtered at UHDP the week before (having killed chickens and rabbits, and dressed goats before at ECHO, I was surprisingly…apathetic when poor Bessy was offed.  Enter: gasps of shock and horror!).  After covering my working area with bits of flying meat, I succeeded in turning out nicely minced beef from at least two or three kilograms of cow.  It was a good thing I had been hoeing for an entire day before, so I wasn’t as sore in my arms.

Gurd, Lo and Pi Da helped turn out a lovely meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, pad thai with pork, a lemony cucumber salad and a garden salad with tomatoes.  The guys had been playing soccer right next door to the kitchen, so they tromped down and sat down to eat right after the game.  As my boss, Ajaan Tui said: “This is the countryside, they’ll just eat in their sweaty shorts and then shower afterwards!”  Alrighty.  I managed to put some sparkly eyeshadow on to make my 30^th birthday feel a little more festive.  The pad thai was a hit, but the spaghetti was not.  I noticed one of the guys sneak off to the side of the building with his plate and then I heard the scraping of fork against plate, and then saw a fluffy dog’s tail wag.  It’s a good thing there are dogs and cats around to eat leftover scraps!  I’m taking mental notes of what my Thai friends like to eat and what they don’t like (apparently, dark chocolate cake is not popular) so I will eventually win their hearts through their stomachs (*evil laugh*).

The fun part of the evening occurred when people said birthday blessings to me, wishing me a good stay in the big city of Chiang Mai and successful language learning.  I left for Chiang Mai the following day, and it was a pleasant realization that although I had only lived at UHDP for three and half weeks, I would be looking forward to seeing my friends up north again after my one month stay in Chiang Mai.

Oh, not to forget, but one of the other wonderful thing about my 30th was receiving a HUGE package from friends in Canada.  It was full of yummy candies (Maynard’s Wine Gums – oh YEAH), dark chocolate, Kool-aid, pulp fiction and a copy each of the VOGUE with SJP on the cover and Instyle.  Thanks again, SB, AG, JT, TT, FW, AW, SF, CY!!