My Birthdays Abroad

Today, I celebrated my 29th birthday in Kenya, the 8th country in which I've had my birthday. For awhile I had a goal of having my birthday in as many countries as possible, but that gradually slipped down, and thus I never even crossed the bridge to Ontario during my seven years in Michigan, as was originally my plan.

My 13th birthday was spent in the town of Lemgo, Germany, hosted by the Kroeker family, whose son Alex would come the next year to us in the USA to spend 6 months as an exchange student.

My 20th birthday was spent completely alone. I woke up in a hostel in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I took the ferry over to Scotland that day, and trained through the hills to the town of Arrochar. My poor planning left me without a place to stay, and I was contemplating spending the night in a stairwell when I found a B&B and splurged on a nicer stay. (It was my birthday after all.) I told the host it was my birthday, because I just wanted somebody to know.

My 21st birthday was spent with a SOZO team in Timisoara, Romania. Two Canadian girls sang me Happy Birthday in Romanian, and then we got on the train. We had a disastrous series of events which precluded us having valid tickets. The ticket guy let us stay on the train, because we played him our version of "Mrs. Robinson". The day ended in Baja, Hungary, with a big team dinner where I was given Happy Balls and a big frosty mug of milk.

My 22nd birthday was spent in Bratislava, Slovakia, again with SOZO. This is the only one that I could find a picture of. Randy and I stayed with an awesome Slovak family who gave me a box of chocolates. We were planning on going over the border for the day to sing in Vienna, but were foiled when the border guards went on strike.

And now my 29th birthday finds me in Kenya, celebrating abroad, but thankfully with Rachel and Maggie. No exotic adventures. Just another day teaching in the hospital, and trying to use our professions to glorify God. Amazing breakfast in bed from Rachel, wonderful cake with good friends, lots of Facebook messages, and missing our friends and family back home.