My roommate Emily had her birthday a week and a half ago, so this is just a very late blog post about it.
A couple weeks before her birthday, Emily jokingly mentioned that she celebrates her birthday for an extended period of time each year. This year, she said she wanted to celebrate it for 2 weeks.
The week before her birthday, I started singing her ‘Happy Birthday’ in bits and pieces. The first day, it was just ‘Happy Birthday.’ The second day it was ‘Happy Birthday to you,’ and so on and so forth.
On her actual birthday, I taught my entire guitar class how to play ‘Happy Birthday’ on the guitar. We marched over to the Nurse’s Office with guitars in hand. Students in other classes stared out their doors, wishing they could go on a field trip with the cool guitar class.
We filed in and gave our first official performance to Emily. It was a stirring rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’ At least it made Emily smile.
Emily is always excited to have visitors
Later that evening, I took Emily to dinner. She’s the adventurous type, so she tried something on the menu under the ‘beef’ section. The waitress asked if she knew what it was, and we said no. She then informed me (in German) that it was cow stomach, sliced into fine strips and served with sauce. Emily said she was ready to try something new, so she ordered it!
As a nurse, she was fascinated by the villi in the stomach lining. We both agreed that the flavor would have been better if the sauce had been creamier, because having a sour sauce reminds us of stomach acid. Other than the flavor of the sauce and the rubbery texture of cow stomach, it wasn’t so bad.
Emily smiles with her plate full of hash browns and cow stomach
But I did let her eat half of my sausage…
A good German meal: potatoes, green beans, and sausage topped with caramelized onions.
It was a day of firsts for Emily, and it was my first time knowing her on her birthday. I’m thankful for my roommate!
