Birthday Blog!!!

Celebrating my 30^th birthday on board the MV Explorer was a dream come true. To be able to do what I love in such an intense environment, AND get to travel the world is just still very surreal for me, even though I am living it. I won’t lie, I was incredibly homesick in the days before my birthday. There is something about spending 29 years of birthdays surrounded by family and FRamily (friends that are family… see what I did there?) and being thousands of miles away that just will naturally bring that out. I am extremely close with my family, I am a bit of a homebody, and this was… well different! The amazing news? My SAS family took amazing care of me on my birthday, and the days around it.

I share my birthday week with my SASsy BFF Craig who was born February 22. We found out that we are not only the same zodiac sign (Pisces) but also the same Chinese Zodiac as well (boar) which explains why we get along so well. This will be important information soon, as I tell you all what my amazing new friends did to help me celebrate in the middle of the ocean.

So on the 23^rd, we had a cake in staff meeting. It was yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It was DELICIOUS (but not as good as sunshine cake). My coworkers decorated my door and gave me cards and small gifts and it was wonderful. At the noon announcements they usually announce birthdays by saying “we have members of the community celebrating a birthday today, so happy birthday to…..” but it was a super busy day and Jim forgot (he made up for it later, I promise). That evening Craig and I met our family for dinner. I can’t remember if I told you about the extended family program, but I will now. The Lifelong Learner Coordinators (who are AMAZING), do a program where they match stuents up with adults on the ship to be their “parents”. The students love it! I signed up right away to have some cool younger siblings, and Craig opted out. The program was so popular by the students that I was given 6 kids! I asked Craig to come with me to my first family dinner since I was nervous it would be hard to talk to the 6 kids, and he decided to take on the role of “Very Young Dad” for my kids. So I have six children (who didn’t take to the “cool older sister” and call me mom), five girls and one boy and they are all AWESOME. So for my birthday I wanted to make sure they all got cake, and so I planned a family dinner with them and Craig and made them sing to us and we ate ice cream cake. Now, cake on the ship is kind of a novelty. They have dessert with every meal but they are never as special or delicious as the cakes you order on birthdays or special occasions and the cakes are HUGE.  As soon as it comes out, people start hovering around the table hoping you will start giving the extra away… it’s a little hilarious, and a little sad. I went upstairs to find some of our friends to get leftovers first and then gave it to the vultures! LOL We had a great visit with the kids and I think they were super happy to have ice cream cake.

That night, I went up to the faculty/staff lounge for my party. Dan offered to DJ a dance party for me. I was game. Once it got started, it was clear that everyone needed to blow off some steam with a little dancing. I danced so much, my legs hurt the next day.. like HURT.. like night after Attitudes in college hurt! I chalked it up to a great workout. J Dan  was an awesome DJ and it was great dancing the night away with great colleagues and friends. You can see into Glazer from the front of Deck 7 and some of the students were up there, shocked that the old people would be dancing… Alvin (my fave bartender now that Mandy left) closed the blinds but the rumor mill started churning. I cannot tell you how many students came up to me the next day saying things like “I heard your birthday party in Glazer was out of control!” or “Did security really get called on you all?!” or “WOW Way to RAGE! I heard all about it!” hahhaha

On the 24th, Jim made me a special birthday announcement at lunch apologizing for forgetting a dear friend’s birthday the day before. That night we went to special dining. Special dining costs $29.99 and is a 5 course meal comparable to dressy night on the touristy cruise lines. The hotel director let us book almost the whole room for our birthday and 20 of our friends joined us for dinner and drinks and laughs. I had the steak which was amazing but the most amazing thing was that one of the appetizers had cream cheese on it! I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed cream cheese until I ate a million of those appetizers. I was raving about them (the pate was good too but danng cream cheese!) all night and especially after a little wine… I think when my chocolate cake got put in front of me I was still going on about cream cheese (I’m sure the lovely people at my table were thrilled – Amanda, Craig, Dan, Willard, Rico, & Monika – I apologize). Anyways the next day at lunch they had cream cheese sandwiches (cream cheese, cucumbers, lettuce) and I was just as excited and ate too many! I miss cream cheese. Anyway, back to dinner – it was delicious and we had such great company! Archbishop Tutu even stopped by to kiss me and wish me a happy birthday and gush over how beautiful I looked! (Then I got made fun of for turning RED – he is the sweetest!). I was so glad that so many of our friends were able to make it and celebrate with us and it truly was a great birthday.

I have to at least mention the unbelievable amount of love I got from home too! Between facebook and email I got so much birthday love! It was wonderful and overwhelming and I was so happy that they were still thinking of me at home, even though I know life is going on as usual. I can’t wait to celebrate with pizza and mashed potatoes in April!