تفسیر درس

##Birthdays – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Birthdays. So I thought that for this commentary I would talk about a couple of parties of mine, birthday parties. Y’know, one was mentioned when I was 8 or 9 years old, I’m not quite sure. I think I was turning 8 years old. In the conversation it was talked about with the piñata game.

So I wanted to first tell you about a birthday party that was…one of my birthday parties that happened, it was two birthdays ago. And the Millennium, as I told you, it’s the name of a restaurant, mine and Joe’s favorite restaurant, it’s a vegan restaurant. That was mentioned or talked about in the conversation. So that’s usually a place where Joe and I will take each other for our birthdays.

So two birthdays ago, we made plans, we were going to go to the Millennium for my birthday and all that I knew was that it was going to be Joe and I and AJ and his wife, Tomoe. They were here in San Francisco. That’s all I knew. So we get to the restaurant and it’s so funny, we just arrived and I start to walk into the restaurant and I see this couple that I know.

It’s friends of mine and Joe’s and they’re…they must have been sitting at the bar and waiting for us to arrive but I didn’t know it. So they’re sitting at the bar, they see us and they start walking towards us. I’m thinking it’s just going to be me and Joe and AJ and Tomoe, like I said, so I see this couple, Louis and Caroline, and my first thought was “Oh my gosh, hi, it’s so nice to see you. What are you both doing here?

And they said, “What do you mean what are we doing here? We’re here for your birthday.” I was so surprised. I said, “What? How did you know?” And they said, “Joe called us. He arranged this. He set all of this up.” I had no idea. And it’s so funny looking back because they…we had actually eaten at the Millennium restaurant with them before but they’re not vegans.

They’re meat-eaters and they really liked the Millennium, but I should have known, hm, why are they here. They’re not…they’re not vegans. Like why would they choose to just come here. It should have clicked. I should have known that they were there for my birthday but sometimes, I don’t know. It just…I didn’t realize. It was kind of a funny, funny little thing.

So we go and we sit down and so it’s…it’s…now it’s 1, 2, 3, 4…there’s 6 of us instead of 4, like I thought it was going to be but we go to a table that has 2 more chairs, or no, sorry, there was 1 more chair. So we sit down and I said, “Well, Joe, there’s one more chair.” We were at this big round table. And he said, “Yeah, I know.” And I was like, “Is somebody else coming that you’re surprising me with?” He said, “Yeah, your friend Amber.” And I was like, “Oh my god, this is great.”

Again, I had no idea. So she came. Amber, my friend Amber showed up, y’know, about five minutes later. Complete surprise again and wonderful surprise. Then Joe starts telling me that he had also invited one of my other friends, Lindsay, but that she had canceled at the last minute. She was feeling really tired and wasn’t going to be able to make it. And I got really disappointed.

But again, I was so shocked like that he had surprised me by inviting four other people to my birthday dinner that I had no idea about. So I ended up calling my friend, Lindsay, and I was able to talk her into coming to the restaurant. So there ended up being, it was me and Joe and AJ and Tomoe, and the couple, Louis and Caroline, and then two other…two of my other friends, Lindsay and Amber.

So it was a great wonderful party. And then Joe actually ended up paying for everybody which was another surprise, I think even for all of them. Because typically, as was mentioned in our conversation, if…like if I, in that situation, being out with my friends celebrating my birthday, they usually typically would…would all give money to pay for my meal. So the fact that Joe actually ended up paying not only for me, but for everybody there, that was more Thai style as we mentioned in the conversation, Thailand being the birthday person actually pays for everybody they invite to come out to celebrate their birthday.

Okay, so that was one really fun birthday that was a surprise. Then there was another birthday, I’m not going to mention what age I turned. We’ll just say it was a big birthday. It was a big year, a big number to be turning, a big age to be turning. So I decided to celebrate this birthday, that I wanted to do it in Georgia, the state where I grew up and where a lot of my family still lives. So that’s in the southeastern part of the United States.

So I also decided it was just going to be family. So I invited all my family that lives in that area, which isn’t a lot, but it’s actually family that’s on my dad’s side of the family as well as my mom’s side of the family.

So it ended up being my parents and my two brothers, my mom’s brother and his son, who would be my cousin and his wife and little boy. And then my dad’s, one of my dad’s brother’s wives, his brother is actually dead but his ex-wife actually, and her daughter and son. I think that was everybody that was there. Oh, and my older brother’s son was there. My younger brother with his girlfriend and their newborn baby at the time.

So it was pretty small but I had decided I wanted to have it at this state park, beautiful state park. There’s a lot of woods, y’know, so it’s very…a lot of trees. And it’s in the mountains and there’s a big waterfall.

So we had it, and my birthday’s in August, as I mentioned in the conversation which means in Georgia in August it’s really hot and really humid. Humid meaning there’s a lot of moisture in the air, a lot of water in the air.

So we had it outside in the park in this what we call a pavilion. A pavilion is a just a covered area. So there’s a top like a roof, like a top part of a house. But then there’s, there’s no sides. There’s just the poles that hold up the roof. So it’s open on the sides. So it’s only covered on the top in case it rains. So we had it there and some people were a little worried that it might be too hot, but actually that day it was overcast, which overcast means it was cloudy. So the sun was hiding behind the clouds so the sun was not too intense and it actually made it a little bit cooler then.

And then some people were worried there would be too many mosquitoes, but that wasn’t even a problem. It was a really nice fun day and for me it was…it was almost like a family reunion even though we were celebrating my birthday. It was like a family reunion because it’s so…usually when I go back to visit my family in Georgia, it’s, y’know, I’m seeing my family. They’re all spread out. They’re living in different parts of Georgia so I’m seeing them at different times by themselves.

So to get everyone together was very special. And Joe and I had decided that we were going to take care of all the food and all the drinks. So again, that was kind of Thai style because usually, y’know, people would bring food to help, y’know, to offer that. But we did it all and some people went hiking.

Some people were playing soccer or baseball, I’m not sure which. And we were just sitting around talking. It was really, really nice. And I just love being out in nature anyway so that made it very special also.

And we had such a good time that two years later, so just last summer actually, my cousin who was there, she decided to celebrate her mother’s birthday, my dad’s brother’s, his brother who passed away, she’d been his wife, so my aunt…my cousin decided to celebrate her birthday at this same state park last summer. It was her 80th birthday. And she did it because we all had such a good time at this park. She was like, “Wow, what a great place to have had a party. I’m going to have my mom’s 80th birthday party there and it’s going to be a surprise.”

And she actually was able to keep it the secret the entire time. She had one of her brothers come from New York, he lives in New York with his family so they all came. Two of her other brothers live here in California where Joe and I live, so they came. And she had some of her friends there and, of course, me and my brothers and my parents. We had it at an actual building that had air conditioning and we had everything set up. All the food laid out. We had balloons.

Everything was set up for her party and they brought her there after we…we were all there waiting. And they brought my aunt and they were telling her they were just taking her to the state park to go hiking for the day and they brought her into the building. They said, “Oh, maybe we should stop and use the bathroom before we go hike.”

And so she thought she was going into a building with a bathroom and when she walked in we were all there and, y’know, of course we yelled, “Surprise!” And she was so surprised. She had no idea. She started crying. It was very emotional. She’d been brought there by one of her…one of her sons who she thought just happened to be visiting her. So it was a fun, fabulous…fabulous means like wonderful…time celebrating my aunt’s birthday and it was inspired by my birthday that had been at the same state park.

So that’s two birthdays that were surprises, my aunt’s and then the one I was telling you about at the restaurant where Joe surprised me with four of my friends coming and then the party that Joe and I had for my family where we provided all the food and it was kind of like a family reunion. Reunion means like a gathering or coming together.

So I hope you enjoyed my stories of three different birthdays, two mine, one my aunt’s…my aunt’s 80th.

And thanks so much. Have a good month and I will see you next time.