Chapter Three: a trip, a birthday, and a car

In order to maintain our state of legalness, we are required to leave the country every 90 days for three days. This doesn’t mean that we have to be out for 72 hours, because the border people only look at the date, not the hour. Ha. So we drive out late and drive in early. This time we went with two new couples who are friends of ours. Well, they’re not new couples, but new friends. Anyways, the country we drove to is incredibly cheap and the dream land of any woman, as the clothing items are deliciously inexpensive. I didn’t go blow a lot of money on a ton of stuff, mind you. But I did blow a little money on a few items that I’ll need for an upcoming trip we are making to Africa (YES! AFRICA!!!) And I might have, just maybe bought a pair of dazzling silver sandals. But I’m not sure. We would rather not have to make this trip, but alas, we do, so we did. Our friends ran into a man who lived an hour away from where we were staying where there is a beautiful (while not exploding) volcano. And a Greek restaurant. He drove us to this Greek restaurant which was basically a small house cutely adorned in Greek style with Greek music twittling in the background. Jason and I decided it would be quite possible that the owner isn’t Greek, as his Spanish was impeccable, but once we tried the food, we were sold. Authentic Greek it was. Not that I would know since I’ve never been there. The trip was brief, fun, and served its purpose. We are back to being legal.
Jason’s birthday was the 31st of March, the day…we…were….GOING TO BUY OUR CAAAAARRRR!!! Yey. (We finally found a car. Praise God!). I told Jason that for his birthday this year I was giving him a car. = ) He said that didn’t count. WHY, I ask you, does getting a car on the day of someone’s birthday not count as their present? I’m offended. And here I was so proud of his gift. I’ll be hard pressed to match such a gift next year. So, in light of his rejection of my grand gift, I decided to organize a surprise birthday party for him instead. Now, if you know anything about Jason…he. Is. Hard. To surprise. The plan was to meet up with all of our dear friends from the church at a hotel that is right next to the church. This hotel has a nice eating area and a very large pool, so the adults could chat while the kids splashed around. The hotel people were gracious enough to allow us to do this for free (with the exception that the pool fee is always $1), and they also agreed to call Jason with an excuse for him to come to their office that day. There is a large group of men coming down this week who are staying at that hotel, so it wasn’t a big deal for them to call him to come settle something (quite fabricated) concerning the reservations. Needless to say, carrying out the plans was a disaster: We had to go to a far away city to get the car but we would be back early so that I could decorate for the party and get Jason over there, but the bank system was down that day, we weren’t able to get the car (which scratched my birthday gift idea), we arrived way late, Jason told the hotel people he couldn’t come that day and would come the next day (CROAK!) I still had to make the icing for the cake and get it over there without making Jason suspicious, and HOW IN THE WORLD WAS I GOING TO GET JASON TO COME TO THE HOTEEEEEL!!!!! Ahahaha. The solution: I told Jason that our pastor’s wife needed help getting ready for an event for the next day (which she did) so I would be going over there. Our neighbor’s daughter needed some medicine so they “needed to go to the pharmacy” and “did I need a ride to the church?” “Jason, our fridge is full (which it was) and you like your tres leches cake to be really cold (which he does) so I’m going to go put it in our neighbor’s almost empty fridge (which it was) so that it will be icy for you.” Except I put it in the car instead and we headed off laughing with glee at our cunning wit. We decorated everything really cool-like but STILL had no way of luring Jason to the Hotel. I called Jason and gave him some desperate excuse of how the hotel people called to say they reallllllly needed him to come in that day because the manager would be out of town and blah blah blah….So, at LAST, he came. And up to about two minutes before we said surprise, miraculously, he WAS surprised. YAY! Who needs a car when you get a surpsies birthday party. And Jason surprised me back, he said it was the first surprise birthday party he had ever had. Awwww. I love him. The grand finale was a dinner at our favorite restaurant in almost the whole world, because the very best one is in Lebanon.
We got the car the next day.