Another tough transition is that there is nothing similar to sheet cakes here. Pastries and tarts are far more common than cakes, and the cakes they do have are either custard cakes or sponge cakes. Jeremy managed to find some boxed cake mix although it was only enough for a loaf pan, not a cake pan and googled how to make icing since we couldn't find any in the baking isle.
We went to a Chinese buffet that serves food closer to American-style Chinese. For those who don't remember this blog post from way back in January, ethnic food is very different here. I found myself not liking French Chinese food at all. Then one day Jeremy's coworkers took him to this restaurant for lunch and he knew he had to take me here. So he saved the idea for a rainy day and then decided it would be a perfect birthday present.
Later, we had a couple friends over for a small get together. We played a board game called Alcatraz The Scapegoat. It's a really fun game in which 3 to 4 players are prisoners trying to escape Alcatraz. You have to work together to complete 6 different tasks, but one of you will be left behind as the scapegoat. The scapegoat is voted in by the players at the beginning of each turn, so if that is the turn that wins the game then the scapegoat is left behind and loses. It's a unique twist on a cooperative board game. I don't play too many board games because I hate competing with other people but there aren't too many cooperative board games that keep it interesting enough to want you to play again and again. I highly recommend this game to anyone, click on the link in the beginning of the paragraph to check it out. (It's in English, by the way!)
During the game, I told Jeremy to ice the cake and bring it out. This garnered odd looks from our friends. I said, "The cake doesn't have any icing on it, he has to ice it." Well, remember how I said we couldn't find any icing to buy? Apparently it's because they don't use icing. These guys had no clue what we were talking about. Jeremy had to physically show them the bowl of icing before they were like "huh, okay....". They both tried it. JN didn't like it but Ben did, even asking for some more!
I also found out through the day that I should be getting a couple more packages and some letters in the mail eventually. I also got an amazon gift card! All in all, it was a pretty good birthday even though I spent it so far from home.