Life in IraqiKurdistan.Birthdays

Many of you always ask about how things are different here and many asked this last week "What did you do to celebrate Andy's Birthday?" In the states we would take the week to celebrate, one date night, spend weekend with family, one or two nights celebrating with friends etc. We make it a pretty big deal. So although it wasn't a week long celebration it was one, fun-packed day.

Here's a day in the life of the Birthday Boy!

*Slept-in while I made 2 cakes, and some cupcakes for a surprise at school. (1/2 of which I did in almost-dark.)

*Woke-up to eggs-in-the-hole. Have you heard of these delicious goodnesses? Andy's fave breakfast here. Had coffee, chilled, and read about the bears victory the night before.

*Opened gifts- I tried to find him a "Track Suit" He wore sweatpants to play basketball a couple weeks ago, and to Kurds, that's like wearing your pj's. Not cool! But since Andy is the tallest man in the whole city, they haven't been easy to find. Thought I may have found a pair, but.... still too short. Zander got him "Meastro" which is the Turkish version of a Snicker bar. Look Zander is actually sharing them!

Went for a walk to try to find him a new Bday present since the Track suit didn't work. He ended up with a new belt. :)

Like he brought up, this was the NICEST day he has ever had on his birthday. (as far as weather goes.) Normally it's 20 below or something crazy! It was a gorgeous day. Somewhere in the upper 50's! Which is about the temp. of our house when city power isn't on!

We got to have lunch at MFC (Marina Fried Chicken) Something we find ourselves wanting around special holidays is ANYTHING that resembles "Home" and a change-up from the normal stuff. Not a lot of variety here. So MFC chicken and fries was his choice!

He went to school. Little did he know that I was going to surprise him, because Zander took his afternoon nap at a friends house, while I took cake to school and shared it with the students.

You have no idea how hard it was to get these students in for this picture. They acted like they have never done it before. Maybe they haven't- I don't know. This is the best we could do and... it's still blurry!

Duhok has a place called "Dream City" You pay less than $2 to get in and it has a beautiful play area, roller coaster, ferris well, and arcade area. Andy has been asking to go bowling for awhile so thought we would go to the only place you can bowl here (although to us it's amazing they even have something like this!) It was super fun, although he pretty much took control of the game!

After the game, we went and picked up Zander and I fed him supper, and asked Andy to check the email. He didn't know that I asked everyone to send him an Happy Birthday message. He was reading emails for a couple of days. He loved it! So thank you all of you who wished him happy birthday!

Then our teammates came over after Zander went to bed. So Andy and I walked to one of the nicest restaurants in Duhok. It was great. Onion rings, lamb chops, Moutabal, and a Heiniken. Yummo! Hard to believe you can eat the nicest meal in town for $30! We ended the night eating cake with our team.

It was an amazing day! We got to spend a ton of quality time together, enjoy the luxuries in the city, and I know my hubby enjoyed his fun packed day so it was worth it and he deserved some pampering! We were both exhausted, but moved right back into the swing of things the next day! Phew!