My birthday celebration began around 12:30 Friday the 13th. My friend Laura woke me with a chocolate cake, streamers, 2 balloons and confetti. While she normally has a beautiful voice, she walked into my room singing “Happy Birthday” in an extremely creepy male voice… I’m not quite sure what she was trying to accomplish, but it definitely work me up in a bit of a fright. I made my wish and blew out my candles and took a look at the balloon she had toted along with her. One she had dubbed as “Sassy Steve” and she drew a face on one side, and a butt on the other. I was ordered to “smack sassy Steve’s butt” in order for my birthday wish to come true. The other balloon was much more sentimental on it, she had written the following:
21 Reasons I Like You as a Bestie
1. You’re sassy
2. You’re sweet
3. You’re funny
4. You’re gorgeous
5. You got sick dance moves
6. You’re friendly
7. You love to have fun!
8. You smile a lot
9. You make me smile
10. You make everyone smile
11. You’re loud
12. You’re crazy
13. You are wise
14. You are youthful
15. You like boys a lot
16. You’re an amazing friend
17. I love spending time with you
18. You are selfless
19. You’re adventurous
20. You’re spunky
21. I haven’t met anyone as lively, loving, sweet & saucy, pretty, entertaining, bad-a, & giving, caring, inspiring, cute & funny altogether as you!
So if that’s not a midnight ego booster, I don’t know what is. After taking some unflattering pictures and storing the cake in the fridge, Laura and her host brother went back home and my roommates and I went back to sleep, but it was no where near the end of the birthday festivities.
Friday morning I had class and had a list of errands to run, so nothing too exciting went on until afternoon tea with my roommates. One of my roommates, Millie, had made a Lamington Cake for me. This consisted of two vanilla cakes stacked on top of each other with cream and jam in between, covered in chocolate and coconut. As can be imagined, it was delicious! We devoured almost the entire thing and washed it down with a bottle of champagne. They gave me a card with adorable notes from each of them and Millie gave me a necklace that she had made me- a beautiful wooden flower charm painted blue and white. Laura came over a little later and we started to get ready for the formal welcome drinks that were planned by a group called Swinmates. We had known about this event for a few weeks now and thought it would be a great experience to have on my birthday.
Ana, Chris, Brian, and Trent (Brian and Chris’ Australian roommate) showed up around 5:30 with presents, flowers, and warm wishes. The girls bought me a super cute bag that has cities of Australian written all over it, along with a scarf. The boys brought me a beautiful bouquet of purple and yellow flowers and a Smirnoff Ice with which they “iced” me. Pretty typical.
We headed down the road to the Hawthorn Pub to meet with the rest of the international students for the formal welcome drinks. I had a 21 badge on that my roommate Daniella had gotten for me. When you hit a button on the back of it, it lit up in a festive manner- prefect for a 21st birthday celebration.
After a few hours at the Hawthorn a group of us jumped on a train and headed to downtown Melbourne (or the CBD- Central Business District). There we grabbed a late dinner and headed to a club called La Di Da. The most eventful trip was trying to get home from there. The trains stop running at midnight, but we didn’t leave the club until around 2:00am. Laura, Eli, and I had to try to find a Night Rider bus and take it back into the suburb of Hawthorn, in which we live. Wandering the streets of Melbourne at 2:00 in the morning is surprisingly safe and unintimidating. Of course, we did have Eli the Aussie with us who knew the area a little bit better. We jumped on and got home around 3:30 am. An overall successful birthday celebration if you ask me.
The next morning (Saturday) we woke up fairly early and headed to a footy game. Footy is Australian Rules Football which is extremely different from American Football. The ball is bounced on the ground and carried; the only way to pass the ball is to “handball” it or kick it and you must kick the ball through the specific poles to score. It’s entirely too complicated to explain on here, but it was super interesting to watch. Also, the game was largely a Victorian sport for a long time (Victoria is the state in which Melbourne resides) and 80% of the footy teams are from the state of Victoria. Australians also have a tendency to be very passionate about their footy teams. There was a section in the stadium we were not allowed into because you have to be a member of the club to get in. Their seats were nothing special, the only thing different was they had a great location, but it was explained to us that people need to put in an application to have seats in the section and often can wait up to 20 years to get approved. Not only does that process need to take place, but also they need to pay thousands of dollars a year to keep their placement. Very passionate, indeed.
We were not so invested. We paid $13 and found a nice group of seats on the 4th tier, which was surprisingly okay seating—the stadium is so huge (because the field is so large) that each tier can fit an astounding amount of people. The Richmond Tigers lost horribly to the Carlton Blues- a final score somewhere around 50-136 or something crazy like that.
The group headed back to Hawthorn for a feast of kangaroo meat made by the lovely Chris and Brian and a relaxing movie. It was a great birthday weekend, made even better by my fabulous friends. I received dozens (if not hundreds!) of “happy birthday” wishes via my facebook friends and a heartwarming card from my Grandma! My parents sent me adorable gifts and that I received a few days later. Overall, I felt very loved and a lot less lonely than I was expecting to be. It feels great to be 21!
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