"You poor girl. 23 and not married!"

It's true. I turned 23 on Friday and am not married. This comment, however, was the only one of its kind. It turns out that the best possible antidote to being sort of majorly bummed out after returning from 2 weeks of fun in the sun in Israel with your boyfriend and new best friends (the other JSC volunteers, who are the most impressive, pro-active, forward thinking, good-doing group I have ever come across, except for maybe my Mountain School peers...this is a debate for another time...), is a birthday in Ukraine!

In Ukraine, the birthday person takes everyone else out, or brings everyone else lunch at work. Then it is all the guests responsibilities to toast to the birthday person's health, happiness, success, prosperity, love life, ect, ect, and obviously get very drunk. People do also give gifts and flowers. I'm not exactly in a financial situation that allows me to treat everyone to a large meal, so instead I brought congac and chocolate to work and figured whoever wanted to toast to me and eat chocolate could do so.

At about 11:30am on Friday, some of my co-workers and I decided we had waited long enough to get the birthday festivities rolling. By 11:45 I had received several gifts, a bouquet, and had about 4 shots of congac. This is not the first time I have had too much to drink at work. I have celebrated a couple other birthdays at work, that of a co-worker complete with lunch spread, and that of a co-workers granddaughter who lives in another city...In an effort to be sober for my meeting at JCD at 12:30, I ate A LOT of chocolate and cookies and cake that appeared from our office cabinets...

I was feeling pretty good when I arrived at my meeting at 12:30. After about 10 minutes of meeting, Julie asked me if I could come with her to another quick meeting...She lead me to the lunch room, opened the door, and there was almost the entire JDC Kiev staff, 2 cakes, 6 bottles of champagne, more chocolate and bouquets! Several people made toasts, and I cried....as I seem to do frequently here because I am frequently so moved by something. Once upon a time I never cried. Ever. It turned out that one of the bouquets was from my parents (so sneaky) and there were also two boxes of gorgeous dainty cakes from the fancy patiserrie in the fancy shmancy hotel that my mom had had someone pick up for me (so SO sneaky!).

With all my gifts, flowers, and cakes in tow, a driver took me home. We stopped at the post office to pick up a FANTASTIC Hanukkah/Birthday package from Dana and Greg that miraculously remained in tact at the post office for 2 weeks. I got home and looked over my treasures, cried some more, and watched selections from my amazing new DVD collection (thanks to Mirs, Evan, Dana and Greg and the JSC swap). Turns out starting your day with several shots of congac makes you tired...I managed to rally and go out to dinner with some of my friends at a restaurant decorated like the inside of a train...different rooms are different themed cars. We were in the VIP car aka the Tsar's car. Hilarious.

Throughout the day I received several phone calls, e-mails, and text messages from people both here and at home. THANK YOU! Overall, a fabulous birthday! I was really overwhelmed by the generosity, kind words, and true feeling of belonging I felt from my friends and co-workers here...the timing couldn't have been better!

Pictures from Israel are up! Enjoy.