Birthday

We had a normal morning of classes on Wednesday and the students were going to go home in the mid-afternoon after two final classes. For us, the Labor Day holiday began a little early, so we have a 4½-day weekend. I was going to meet with my Chinese tutor after lunch, but one of the Chinese teachers asked me to come to a classroom. I was told to instruct the class on how to sing the Happy Birthday song in Spanish. It’s sort of unusual, and I had wondered why the teacher asked me for the lyrics the day before.

Everyone was given a piece of paper with the lyrics to the Happy Birthday song in English, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. After a few quick runs through the song, aided by some phonetically-spelled, pseudo-Pinyin words on the whiteboard (kei lous kumplas feilis…), a Korean student went through the Korean version (sang il chook ha hap nee da…). Then the Chinese (zhu ni sheng ri kuai le…) and English versions (you know that one) were sung to me by all the high school students and a couple Chinese teachers.

Next I was given handmade cards by many of the students and a cake was revealed. The cake was covered in a smooth pink frosting and colorful and edible flowers. There were two candles – a number “two” and a number “four.” In East Asia your age is counted in ordinal numbers, in the same way that we number centuries, so you are one year old when you are born. I am entering my 24th year of life, so I’m considered to be 24 years old here. I guess I’ll never be 23, or at least I skipped celebrating my 23rd birthday by coming here.

The cake was kind of odd – like a wedding cake, but pink – and I was handed a lighter and told, “Okay, now you light!” Followed by, “Now you close your eyes and make a wish!” Nothing is ever quite what you’d expect it to be here. I divided the cake up into 30 odd pieces, was smeared on the cheeks with frosting, and had a student take some pictures with my camera.

The little surprise party was really cool (both afternoon classes were canceled for it), the four birthday songs were fun, and the cards were neat. They are really creative and they tried their best with English:

“I thanks that you teach well English to me so far.”
“I really happy birthday to you.”
“Today is special day >_< , your birthday!!!”
“Teacher, I really hope that you have a happy time in your life >_<”
“You are a Best teacher on the English.”
“Sam! How are you? I’m fine, thank U, and you?
“I always thank for your teaching.”
“Sam cool!”
and
“Some one say ‘Help!’ Do you know why? He is Sam. Super Sam.” (I was given the nickname Superman and Super Sam by the primary kids and it has caught on.)

Fun to see and read, but it looks like I still have some work to do turning their Chinglish into perfect English.