November is a hard month for me even though this should be very joyous! This time of year marks the fall time where seasonal blues start to hit and I realize that the year is coming to a wrap very soon. The main event of the month is my birthday where I usually get very sentimental.
Birthdays mean a lot to me because it’s the one day of the year I get to ask people to celebrate me just existing. I love celebrating my friends and cherishing my friends but sometimes it’s hard for me to get that same energy back… but it often shows up on my birthday with all the people I interacted in all levels with wishing me a simple happy birthday 🙂
Usually I celebrate my birthday with my family (mom, dad , and my brother) where they cook my favorite indian dishes like daal fry, puliogare, and kheer and feeding my friends. My mom loves my birthday. Maybe because I am her first child 👧 but she is so silly where she makes like small faces in the foods and makes me wear a silly little birthday hat.
This year I turn 21 which is a scary age for me because I usually see 21 as being a real adult phase. It’s when I finally get a horizontal ID. It’s when I can’t see my pediatrician anymore. It’s when health insurances start to argue with you. It’s an an overwhelming age to be at. BUT HEYY 21 is still very very fun and I am still young. It’s definitely sad that I can’t do the same things I did back home to celebrate my birthday but I found ways to celebrate.
My birthday is November 11th and that was right after travel week 2. I basically got to (pregame) my birthday in Italy! I treated myself to tiramisu everyday (my favorite dessert) to celebrate. I went to Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples… which I will talk more in depth about in another blog. It was a very immersive trip which taught me a lot about resilience, health, and communication.
I was sooo tired from my travels that I slept the entire morning of my birthday but when I woke up I was flooded with the sweetest messages from my friends (friends who I cherish but haven’t been the most connected with when I came abroad). It was a piece of home that I forgot about. I spend most of the day calling those friends and updating them about the amazing time in Copenhagen. Shout Out to my best friend Kris who sent me a care package as a gift for my birthday!
For the evening, I had dinner with my closest friends here and cut cake! It was really sweet because they surprised me with some drinks I like and birthday balloons. I went on a hunt for cake and stumbled across flying tiger which had little birthday hats and Danish flags. I really love how Danes put the Danish flag (Dannebrog) everywhere during celebrations so I wanted to put it on my cake! If we were back in the US, it would be so ODD to have the American flag on a birthday cake HAHAHA. Also, another tradition I do with cake is feeding people who I love. It’s an Indian tradition my parents taught me so I had to do that. My awesome friend took these epic pictures down below (ily).
I ended my birthday really bonding with my friends and having a fun night out…
…I knew that the birthday shenanigans weren’t over… I wasn’t satisfied until I got a Kagemand, a traditional danish birthday cake! One of my best friends at DIS happens to have the same birthday as me so we celebrated our birthdays during the week together 🙂 We even had his local danish friends sing us the Danish birthday songs HAHA
I am very content and happy with my 21st birthday away from home. I felt very loved and had very memorable experiences. Not a lot of people get to say that they spent their 21st birthday in copenhagen dancing with friends and living their best life. Cheers to a new year of life and wishing me a good time. It’s time to make some good memories :))
Yayy see you soon and thanks for reading !!
Finding the Shanti(ka)~ 
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