The one thing that ALL expats abroad, not just in Beijing, have in common is that we have left behind our core community and structure of family and life long friends. Family means a lot of different things for many people, so I don't pretend to know what it looks like for all of us, but we definitely left behind our versions of family. This makes finding a group of friends and community abroad that much more important.
Something about this actually makes it easier to make friends. We are willing to accept the people we are presented with as friends because of our limited options and the isolation we experience abroad. For myself, in the beginning, this meant making "friends" with people who weren't quite healthy or right for me, but they are what was available at the time. After two years now I have carefully and slowly created a circle of people that I would gladly call friends no matter where I am on the globe.
One thing that happens when you have friends, are birthdays. There has been a birthday almost every week since we returned from India. It has been exhausting and overwhelming but I made it out to every single one that I could, even for people that I don't know very well.
In my mind, it is SO important to attend each others birthdays here. We are all alone, and making our way, and in that sense we are really together in this. How depressing is it for an individual to be stranded away from family, and to have no one to celebrate your birthday with? It doesn't matter how old we are, we still need that community. So for all of these birthdays, I have been there, I have brought gifts, and I have organized some of them.
Because, even if I don't know you well, or if you're one of my closest friends here, we have this shared experience. The best thing we can do for each other is demonstrate this with something as simple as a toast and physical presence.
But please, no more birthdays for awhile. My liver needs to recover from this past month.
