The BIG three four!

For six months of every year I can gleefully and honestly boast that my wife is much older than I am. On March 12th she turned 34 years old (which is not nearly as old as it used to be) and this past Thursday I joined her. Even following six months of youthful boasting she treated me to an amazing, wonderful birthday filled with Chinese delights.

She arranged for Rachel to be taken care of during luch which was our first time "alone" in at least two months. We began at the Brazillian restaurant on the first floor of a five star hotel. Two words . . . meat, good. My love for protein was fulfilled as one by one meat was brought to our table and sliced onto our plates. Seriously, this was the best idea since steak. Roast beef, prime rib, chicken, pork, little bacon wrap things all without even getting up. Incredible meal, nice atmosphere and the total bill was about $14 US.

Then we went looking around the hotel just for fun. Thought we might get a massage at the hotel salon but evidently they don't cater to men. So we stumbled into the rec room, filled with ping pong tables and two enormous pool tables (snooker). We said we just wanted to look around but evidently that mean we want to play snooker. The girl at the desk got out the snooker balls and set up the table for us. Problem number one: We have no idea how to play snooker. Problem number two: People were watching us play. So we pretended we knew how to play snooker, had a coke and when no one was looking we threw some balls in the pockets because the game was taking a really long time. The we went to another hotel and got a massage.

We then came back to the rec room to meet our teammates and our daughter for her first game of bowling ever. She's a natural . . . 36 on her first game! We had a blast with our new friends. Just a contrast between bowling in China and bowling in America for you bowling enthusiasts. We had a constant wait staff bringing us drinks and watching us bowl (they even joined in "Happy Birthday"), they brought me an amazing fruit plate with little fruit animals and they cleaned every shoe when we were done. When's the last time you got that kind of service at an American bowling alley.

Then we crossed the street and ate at Happy Tom's pizza buffet which is just below what used to be the world's second largest ferris wheel (I think it's number three now). Leave it to my wonderful wife, who is for the next six months the same age as I, to make growing old a blast. Great day!