Prezzies!!!
June 19, 2005
I think Yibba said it best when she said [paraphrasing] I should stop whining about my birthday and admit that I love it. LOVE IT. Well, okay, FINE. Any day that gets me phone calls from the four favorite men in my life, and emails galore from around the globe and from people I never thought I'd hear from again or would even remember my birthday has to be pretty awesome.
And then there are the presents. Yay, the presents. I always forget how much I love getting gifts until I get them. Some pictures:
This is from my sister. The greatest sister the world has every known 
From Di. Throughout our years at Penn we had heard about this fabled book, "the Islamic Kama Sutra," but only flipped through it last month at a favorite bookstore. It's an excellent read. The pictures are nice too:
Just a sample page--featuring such positions as "the frog's posture," "the stab with a lance" (my favorite), "the sommersault," and "the ostrich's tail"{blush}:
The brothers Nandy, who obviously don't love me at all, brought me a bag of sweet goodies. There were cookies, chocolate, fruit snacks, and cereal bars. Clearly I've gained 5 lbs in the past two days: 
Former study abroad buddy and now fellow Egyptian prisoner, Yasmine, brought me flowers. I kept walking past the kitchen table the next morning in order to get a look at them. So pretty! 
There were other gifts, and there are apparently more to come. I am a sentimental fool though, and though I loved all my gifts, my most cherished one has to be the ring my grandmother gave me. It belonged to my grandfather, and is a bit masculine, like the kind an Arab tribal lord would wear (because we all know what that looks like) with his dark wool robe. It's a large, oval amber stone set in a silver band that has etchings on the two sides which may or not say "Allah". I can't tell. I tried taking pictures of it, but none of the ones I took did it any justice. So you'll just have to take my word for it. It's lovely.