today was my first birthday spent in japan. and it went by just like any other day here. i woke up at 6am and fought the spiders and mosquitoes all the way to my outdoor shower. after sort-of waking up and cleaning up, i drank some coffee and prepared for today's lessons. i taught four classes at two elementary schools today. first graders are pretty rad; sixth graders are lame.

but heres where the story gets good. after work i threw a huge party at my house and invited all of the english-speakers in my town to come celebrate. any boy, today must have been my lucky day; every single english-speaker in my entire town showed up to party with me! oh, what a fun time we all had hanging out with me. to remember the awesome time we had together, we all squished together and took this group photo:

my 29th birthday spent with all the english-speakers in my town. note: all attendants are pictured here.

being the gracious host that i am, i even promised all my guests a piece of chocolate cake. fortunately for my pocket book, that meant i only had to buy one piece of cake. hooray! we struggled a bit trying to fit all twenty-nine candles on that tiny sliver of a cake. im pretty sure we came close to burning down the house when we lit the candles. we had just enough time to snap one picture of the cake before it melted in a blaze of lonely-old-man-confused-as-to-what-the-hell-he's-doing-with-his-life glory:

twenty-nine candles ablaze on top of a cake that was definitely enough to feed the entire party

but sarcasm aside, times like these remind me all the amazing friends of made in all of my previous lives. rest assured that if you are one of the people actually reading this blog then you are in fact one of the peeps that is sorely missed.