Ana's birthday

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all doing fine.

In this article I want to tell you about my sister’s birthday and how we celebrated it. I mean, she’s not exactly here, you know, she is studying abroad, she is in Germany and in college, so that she was not here with us to celebrate her birthday, however, we still bought some things and prepared ourselves for celebrating her birthday. Well, the idea was that we would just celebrate it and we would call her via messenger and see her and everything , you know. that was a good idea, I guess, because it was her 18-th birthday so that she was turning all independent and stuff and it was not just acceptable not to celebrate this moment. Well, it’s only a month or so until her winter break kicks in and she will fly back to Georgia, but still, the date is the date and so that it should be celebrated. I mean, your birthday is only once in a year and that day should really be celebrated. What else is there to do?!

Starting of the day

Well, the day starts at night,  I guess, at least it does when it’s someone’s birthday. So, when it got 12 o’clock here in Georgia, my sister was online on Facebook, so that I was the first one to congratulate her and wish her a happy birthday, though it still was not 12 o’clock there in Germany. Then I went back to my studying for the surgery exam and then went to sleep. The plans for the day were big, if you want to know the truth, we would celebrate her birthday with my uncle and aunt and cousin. However, until that I had an appointment in the embassy of Switzerland and I would hand them my documents and stuff for the visa. It was all planned out. I called my uncle and asked to give me a ride to the embassy and so that he would call me the next day and I would go and stuff like that.

The morning was pretty cold. It was all windy outside and it was kind of freezing, if you want to know the truth. My father was going to work and that was when my uncle called, too, and I was already ready and stuff and I went outside and got into his car where my aunt and cousin were, too.

The embassy of Switzerland

On the way to the center of the city, I could see mountains covered with snow on the horizon. It was really beautiful to look at. So, now you know how cold it was that there was snow on those mountains! My cousin had this colouring paper, where there were some cartoon characters and stickers, too, and he really liked them, I mean, those were Spider Man and stuff like that. So, my aunt went to her work and my cousin went to his kindergarten and we hit the road to the embassy. Well, there are many embassies of different countries on that street, so we had to search for the embassy of Switzerland. Finally we found it and after looking again on my documents and seeing whether I had all of them, we went in. the security asked for our passports or ID and then we were able to get inside. The place was cozy and small, there were two people inside, who would take our documents and everything. This lady asked me about my goal of visiting Switzerland and , to be honest, I didn’t really expect her to ask me anything really. I don’t know why I thought that. And I just told her about my plans and that my sister studied in Germany and I wanted to visit her and we would go to Zurich and stuff like that, however this lady was not satisfied with that and asked me another questions and everything. It was pretty tiring to tell her, that I just wanted to visit this country as a tourist and see it and enjoy some Christmas stuff there. Then she asked me to tell my sister to write a letter about our plans and stuff and send it to the embassy’s e-mail by 12:30 and while it was still early in the morning in Germany and I knew that my sister would be asleep, I had no choice but to wake her up and so that I called her and it was pretty surprising that she answered, because usually she wouldn’t answer, I guess, or at least that’s what I thought. Well, then I told her about this thing and everything and she got to writing. Well, the letter was pretty good, I must say. By that time, we got home. And that lady told me to come back for the answer in a week’s time. So that I’m waiting for the next Thursday to see whether they let me have that visa or not.

The shopping

So, my uncle knew that I would want to buy some things for the birthday celebration and he offered me to drive wherever I wanted and help me with the shopping. I would wait for  my mother to come home, so that we would decide what to buy or things like that and then I would go shopping. I planned on buying a birthday cake, of course, and preparing something. The idea was to prepare Khachapuri, however, then I changed my mind and thought that pizza would be a better idea. And, trust me, it was! Well, the pizza that I make is really delicious, I can say and so do think other people, who have tasted it. I mean, I really like it and if I like it then why should other people not like it, you know?! and I really try to do my best to make it perfect. The usual ingredients are Pepperoni (of course) and tomato sauce with spices and cheese and I usually have some mushrooms in it, too and perhaps some other ingredients, such as sausage or bacon or meat or something and red bell pepper and maybe some olive oil. That is just perfect pizza for me and I always prefer preparing the pizza by myself than to eat it somewhere else, because when I prepare it, I can have anything I want in it and when I order a pizza, there’s never enough ingredients in it that I want.

Anyways, I had this kind of a list that I had to buy and so that I called my uncle and we went shopping. You know those mandarine oranges, they are pretty delicious and every time this year there are plenty of them and we buy them and everyone loves them, plus, they have vitamin C and all the other stuff and they are pretty good, so that we always buy them. And the smell of them just brings some Christmas and New Year feeling around, because this fruit is always on the table during those holidays. So, I bought them and then we went to another place, where there were some prepared food that I bought and some other ingredients for my pizza and then it was time for the cake. There’s this place here called Dolce Vita, which is a very well-known bakery and they say that they have a really good cakes and people go there from another end of the city just to buy some cakes, so that we went there and looked at those cakes and there were three of them which I liked, they were Rafaelo, coffee cake and some banana and berry cake. So we had to choose between them and that was the hardest part of it, I guess. I even called my mother to ask what I should do. Finally we decided to take the coffee one and it had this splendid look, too, so that it was really a good one, we thought, and we weren’t wrong, I must say. It had this white and condensed milk cream fillings and walnuts inside and chocolate glaze and it was really delicious.

So, we had everything. Well, almost everything. I wanted to buy pepperoni, but it was only in Nikora supermarket and I didn’t went in there because I thought that I would prepare pizza without pepperoni, however, I was wrong and at the end, I still got that pepperoni. Though , you should have seen the situation in that supermarket. Well, it was already somewhere around 5 or 6 p.m. so many people were in the supermarket and there was a queue and it was pretty tiring to be in line for forever when you just want to buy pepperoni. So, I got in line and there was this lady who just roamed around, looking at other things and then she got in front of me and, well, I thought, that she would have the decency to let me first and then go next to me, however, she still went somewhere, grabbed some things and still got in front of me, and when finally it was time for us to get closer to the cashier, I managed to go first, however, she got upset and said that she was to be first. Anyways, I didn’t want to argue with her, but I went to the cashier and bought that small pepperoni after all that waiting and stuff.

When I got home, everything was kind of ready and I started preparing pizza. By the time I had it prepared, my uncle was on his way home, so that it was just perfect time to get the pizza into the oven. It needed something about half an hour to be ready and they would be here by that time, too.

The celebration

Well, everything looked just fine. Soon everyone came, except for my father, who had to work that day at the hospital, so that there  we were almost all together. Then we video called Ani and talked to her while my cousin blowing out candles on the cake and us singing “Happy Birthday”. He is only 6 years old and he just loves that process of blowing out the candles, of course,  who doesn’t at that age?! So that I had him blow out the candles maybe three times that day and then we cut the cake. It was really tasty, I will say that again. So, as much fun we had it was time to get back to studying for our exams that we had the next day, so that we said good-byes and they left. I must say, that it was a bad time, because there was no water around, I mean, they said that there was some kind of damaging somewhere nearby and that we wouldn’t get any water until the next day, so that we could do nothing but to wait. Of course, we had water collected _ I mean, that kind of thing kind of happens often here these days. It’s just ridiculous, because even if they update their website, it’s still annoying, when you think that there’s water and in fact you go to the sink and there’s no water. I mean, people can’t just refresh that website every minute just so they can know whether the water is going to be cut or not.

Anyways, I continued my studying for the exam. The exam was to be in surgery, I mean, the general surgery, neurosurgery, oncology, traumatology and orthopedics and pediatric surgery and stuff and it was a lot to revise, however, I still went to sleep kind of early, because I thought I knew everything well, and I was pretty tired, if you want to know the truth.