December is a glorious month. Whether it’s cold and frost, or sun and warmth, it’s a time to celebrate Christmas in Christianity, a time to enjoy the harvest what we accomplished, and a time to relax and think of others that are less lucky than us. To goldies it means more. Irene, Linda and Pamela were all born in this glorious month.
It’s definitely the best time of a year. People, especially in western countries, take a long vacation due to the two biggest holidays, Christmas and New Year. Here in Taiwan we don’t have holidays, yet the trees, streets and buildings decorated with lights, and dangling things that make the city amazingly breath-taking at night says a bright, peaceful, joyful and thankful festival is a universal wish.
Pamela took the initiatives to announce a very special and joy-doubled Christmas and Birthday party more than two months ago. She was throwing a whole-night-through party. We all were going to stay overnight together there. When she decided the date, everything was set and put in place. She reserved a beautiful and spacious wooden cottage in a resort area. Everyone was excited over the biggest up-coming gathering. All of us; Gina, Irene, Kate, Linda, Michelle, Pamela, Sherry and I; couldn’t wait for the day to come except Lydia who was busy in preparing her son’s wedding and receiving her relatives, couldn’t make it. We couldn’t hide our disappointment, but understood how busy she must have been.
Pamela wrote again when the day was approaching:
"Good Friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget". At the special season, I would like to thank you for your supports, caring and friendship and let's have great fun, gatherings, life experience sharing and many others in the coming new year. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and May peace, love and prosperity follow you always in New Year.
How touching! Here’s a rough picture of how she arranged the party .
Place: High up in the beautiful mountain, 陽明山菁山露營場遊憩區
A wooden cottage: spacious enough for ten people to get wild and sleep cozily overnight.
Time: Dec. 25th beginning in the afternoon
Food, drinks and party ornaments: Pamela plus everyone’s input
Car pool: to make sure we will all be there before dinner time.
Entertainment: chatting, photo shooting, singing, dancing, hot spring, etc. .. just being spontaneous.
It turned out that the three who were born in Dec. spent the most time to prepare more-that-we-could-gulp finger-licking food. Linda’s chicken hot pot was seasonal and sensational; Irene’s cold dishes, green onion pan cakes plus a big birthday cake exceeded the volume we can digest. The other food brought to the party was left aside; no enough room in our stomach to touch them. Nevertheless, I did my best to consume the best I could regardless of my limited stomach, never being able to
resist scrumptious food.
To make it short, we had an extremely wild, crazy yet perfectly under-control party. I didn’t know if the roof stayed intact since we made such a big noise. Was the cottage sound-proof enough? We couldn’t tell. Sherry explored her imagination to take numerous incredible group pictures for us including a few taking from outside the cottage. Pamela and Michelle brought their lap tops and speakers to play the songs and music we need. Gina and Kate showed again how Chinese opera has done with their posture. I contributed a little bit with the Christmas ornaments along with Pamela’s carnival props to make the party both Christmas and party like.
When it was deep in the night, our body clock struck against our will. We had to call it a day. Before we hit the sack, goldies tried the hot spring except Irene and me. We two are the ones who don’t find hot spring especially alluring.
By seven the next morning, we woke up and got washed for the breakfast. After taking some more photos at the restaurant, we had special guests of Pamela, a couple with two lovely young twins, coming from Belgium to join us for an hour. Another excitement for the party, teasing the twins and having short chat with the couple. Time flew so fast, it was about noon time. Before we packed things up, Linda surprised us by some more clam soup. When we left the cottage, our stomachs were filled with contentment, yet our heart yearned for more. It convinced all of us we can have more birthday parties like this in the coming years.
Thank you again, Pamela, for bring us the most joyous and warmest Christmas and a memory-filled night to conclude year 2009!
Trini
http://picasaweb.google.com/taipeitmtrini/PamelaLindaIreneSBirthdayInTheGloriousMonth#
