This is your first birthday in Tibet!

I woke to two happy birthday text messages… there were four more before the knock at my door and two brightly wrapped boxes containing another yak and a donkey with detachable saddle bags of beans appeared. A note attached saying “Happy Birthday Ms. Kelly! I love you so much!” All this before my nine am class. Which I didn’t get to until about nine o’ six because three students had been sent to stall me with “what did you have for breakfast Ms. Kelly?” and “oh my stomach is so sick” and “there’s nobody in class!” I walked up to the building with these three students begging me to walk slower only to look up at their classroom and see that all the curtains are drawn. I stopped, pointed at the curtains and demanded “what is happening in the classroom?” The only response from these three was “there is nobody there!” Yeah right, and it’s the first time I’ve been late all year.

I pushed the door open only to be literally blown away by party noise makers, shootable streamers, and masses of silly string… on the desk is a ridiculously huge cake that reads, in perfect English, Happy Birthday Ms Kelly! Best wishes for you! After the silly string settled to the floor, or ceiling, or anywhere it happened to land, one student jumped up and lit the biggest candle/possible blowtorch I’ve ever seen which is also playing a tinny rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. At the end of the chorus the candle half melted half exploded into a plastic flower and continued to play ‘Happy Birthday’ until some student smashed it. We ate cake, smeared it all over our faces, then had English class.

I walked into my eleven am class expecting nothing, haven’t I already had a birthday party? However, as soon as I opened my book to begin teaching it was like a time warp as the silly string and rousing singing filled the classroom… from out of nowhere came an identical massive cake complete with musical candle/blowtorch flower. The first class blew me away, this one stole my heart. The first to the front of the room was one of the boys, he handed me a box and began a speech which you know he had been practicing all night: “Ms. Kelly we know this is your first birthday in Tibet, we want it to be happy day for you, we very love you, this is for you, Happy Birthday.” A box and a kada… then forty kadas, a heap of shy birthday wishes, and a pile of boxes later… me almost in tears. We cut the cake, pour the sweet milk tea, and start passing out handfuls of sunflower seeds… class, if there was to be any class at all today, would have to start later.

Some students helped me carry all the gifts home. I have no capacity to describe what it felt like to open box after box of random trinket, after bracelet, after musical something all with accompanying notes of “Happy Birthday, I love you” or some variation. Here were all the things that they couldn’t say to me, all the things that they wanted me to know in the riddle of necklace or bottle of perfume or miniature piano which played random melodies. Some of the most notable gifts: the boys had gotten together to get me four identical pairs of plastic slippers in different colors (the explanation: there are eight boys in the class, one shoe for each boy), the right size too. One girl gave me a wind up musical pencil holder with the note: this small gift is my heart. Another gave me a lanyard with the note: now I am a student so I have no money, this gift is so small but I want you will like it. Another gave me a bracelet and wrote that it wasn’t very valuable but that it would delegate forever her love for me and hopes that I would never feel alone in Tibet. A few hours later a whole dorm room of students from the same class dropped by with more gifts, the most frightening of which was a mask of the Lord of Death with their names written on the back, the most endearing of which was the following note:

Dear Ms Kelly, Happy birthday to you, we all wish for you have a good time and good luck every day. Our class all the student forever love you. We never change our heart to your love. You must remember. Ok! Happy Birthday to you!

Could it be anything else?