Birthday Fun!

I turned a very odd number this year, and ... basically it is nothing special. I actually wasn't even going to celebrate it that much, but that of course changed when I made my plans to be home for my birthday. As in my previous post, had quite a week of celebrations! Maybe it was my big mouth that every time someone asked me about my trip, and this is even before I left, I said how happy I was to go home and it happened to be my bday when I would be home... which eventually lead to some invites. So here it is almost a month after my birthday, and am still doing birthday celebrations! Ha! Diet out the window and overall not happy with my new tummy, but hey, am enjoying it and actually, not feeling too guilty!!

So... here are some of my celebrations:

My co-workers surprised me (shhh, I kinda knew :-)) at work:

Surprise!!!

I have these SUPER nice Serbian patients I'm treating, started with the wife and then ended up with the husband. They literally live across the street from where I work, so it wasn't too difficult to cross over and have my fave Serbian dishes: Gibanitza and palacinke! Yummmmmmmyyyyyy! They asked me what I wanted for my bday meal, and no doubt it was that!

Then a Polish friend was super kind and made an exception to her "only at Christmas time" rule of making peroigi! She had invited me over during that time and I think every time I saw her I mentioned how they were the best peroigi I've ever had, and I guess being annoying pays off because the next think she tells me is AFTER my marathon, she will make them to celebrate that and my birthday. Her hubby was probably more happy than I was. The wait was soooo worth it!! She also made me a super gluten free cake, which I forgot to take a pic of, but was equally delicious!

Also had a delicious Turkish breakfast that a dear patient of mine made offered to make me. We are friends now, and actually also became friends with patients referred to me! We had a lovely breakfast which turned into lunch we were yapping so much. Which, speaking of, it's something that I should have paid more attention to when I was younger, is reading of the coffee cup. Never too late to, I guess! I think my dad learned from my grandma (??), but he is quite good at it and people are always asking him to "read" their future. Well, my patient is fairly good too! After "reading" the cups of my friends, I decided to give it a go.... I don't drink coffee and we all know how strong Turkish coffee is, so it was a bit of an effort to drink. I'll keep quiet for now, but if anything she said comes true, will let it be known!! But we had so much fun, the Philipina friend now wants to make breakfast which means I may be next with an American breakfast, eek! (but might be easy. Pancakes? Lol).

Burek! No offense to they way us Serbs make Burek, but this was amazing and not as oily and greasy as ours can be sometimes (again, no offense!)

Yes, it was a bit of an effort to drink!

Had a post-running season get together with my "wee" hours running group. Yes, these are crazy people like me that woke up at 4 something in the morning to be on the road running at around 5am'ish. They were sweet to have a little toast for me.

So yes, feeling the love!! :-) And I have to admit, makes me realize one of the best parts of Dubai is the diversity. Of course all of these things involved eating, but went from Serbian dish to Turkish to Polish to everything in between. Love that I have friends from all over the world :-)