At this time last year, I was in San Francisco with a few of my best friends celebrating my 21st birthday. We were in North Beach, at a nameless bar with a nameless crowd. Needless to say, they ensured that I don’t remember much. It was only 11:30 pm. I have good friends.

Today I turned 22, and I remember everything. I woke up, attended my first government-regulated church service, went to lunch with my grandma and her sister, took a nap, got a massage, had dinner, and came home to watch a DVD.

Here are some photos from my birthday:

Every year, without fail, my parents send me flowers on my birthday. This year it was to my office. My coworkers think my boyfriend is amazing ;)

My beautiful grandma and my surrogate grandparents in Shanghai.

The birthday cake Oliver sent me all the way from New York! It’s been in the mail for about a week, perhaps that’s why my stomach is hurting… Joking, but seriously, I ate half of it. The delivery guy had the nerves to ask me out, via text message, after delivering the cake. So Oliver essentially paid for a cake, and a stalker. I love the irony. I should probably get a new number?

This was the first time in my life where I didn’t celebrate my birthday with my nuclear family and my best friends. I’ve been dreading it for weeks. In actuality, it’s only made me realize that being here alone on my birthday is just part of my expatriation experience — I’m going to have to get used to spending holidays on my own or with newfound acquaintances, whether it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving or New Year’s. I skyped with some of my sorority sisters who were at at USC football game this weekend, and I’m going to miss those, including the Homecoming and Thanksgiving games. It’s scary, and I get wrenching pangs of loneliness sometimes, but I realize that this move was necessary to leave my proverbial comfort zone. Oftentimes I want to run home to Palos Verdes, to the comfort of my childhood bedroom and my mom’s constant care, but I need to be here. There’s some reason, which is yet to be determined, but I have to push past the 6-month mark and carve some piece of myself into this city.

I have this intense self-imposed pressure in regards to my early 20s, as if the next three years determine the course of my life. Of course, every passing year steers you in the direction you end up traveling, but I need to let go of this niggling fear that one mistake could ruin me for good. My Italian brethren say I need to stop planning incessantly, and that I need to simply let go.

So on that note, my goals for this 22nd year:

- Write more prolifically and more consistently

- Finally learn a sport (this is not funny)

- Be insouciant, live life as life comes

- Spend more quality time with family, learn more about our history, especially in relation to Shanghai

- Explore and get to know this city, make local friends and travel around China/Asia

- Love with abandon and trust that things will work out the way they are supposed to

- Be grateful for things I have, and relinquish the want of those I do not

- COOK

- Rediscover the word “passion,” something to wake up for every day

I don’t know where I’ll be next year for my birthday, but then again, I’ve never known on October 3rd what I’d be doing the next year. And little did my parents know 22 years ago what a roller coaster ride they’d be riding. Special thank you to the two of them for supporting my adventure to Shanghai — the risks you take on my behalf are far greater than those I purportedly take myself :) Hopefully my 23rd birthday will find me a year wiser, a year kinder, a year more well-traveled and well-read, a year more confident and a year happier than I am right now. However, I’m so thankful for the past 22 years and the people and places God has brought into my life. If this were it, I’ve lived life with few regrets. My birthday wish is that I can say the same next year.