The time: 12:00 noon.
The place: St. Francis Hospital, Trenton, NJ
Out I came, wailing, putting my mother through an incredible amount of pain. To this day, I'm grateful that she stuck through it, for without her, there's no way I would be where I am today. 20 years, a couple of scrapes and bruises, and a few awesome adventures later, here I am, in Athens, Greece, celebrating 20 years of being Angela. It seems so strange that I'm already at this stage in my life, where I can be mostly independent yet still miss my mommy. During the past couple of days I have cooked for myself, done my own laundry by hand, bought a cell phone, mastered the Metro in a city where I don't speak the language, and gotten lost and found again. It's certainly been an interesting experience and I was very much feeling the love on my 20th birthday. One of the highlights was the bus ride in the morning to work. I had walked to work on Monday, but was told I could take a bus to the metro station not far away from the workplace, so after breakfast, I booked it out of the apartment and caught a bus just at the church down the street, which brought me to the Panepistimos metro station, right next to what seemed to look like some kind of academy. It featured Socrates and...I want to say Plato in marble statue form in front, and had huge columns as shown below.
Because it only took me about 10 minutes to get there by bus, I was super early and wandered around the area. It was a nice walk, cool in the morning breeze, and no one really took notice of me, a pleasant change from the day before. Objective to live in a city: ride the bus and not get lost; check.
After work, I had a nice walk back to the apartment and relaxed for a bit, then started making dinner. The menu for the evening: rice w/ basil, some kind of fish with egg wash, and green beans sauteed in soy sauce. YOM. Foray into cooking fish: success.
The meal was consumed with this gigantic bottle of white wine, and after dinner, we wandered about trying to find an open bakery. The cake turned out to be some kind of mousse cake and was waaaaay sweet, but perfect for me after the walk and the wine.
In general, my past birthdays have been pretty low-key, usually just family eating noodles and cake, which has been perfectly alright with me. Though at certain times during my childhood, I have wanted to have big, elaborate celebrations with lots of friends, it's never really been possible, and as I get older, I don't really have the need to celebrate that way anymore. I will say that I have felt so much more loved that I expected I would, (esp. since my Pretty in Pink post), and that I am incredibly grateful to have such wonderful friends and family. <3<3
Hearts and Snuggles,
Angela
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