Birthday Celebrations and Oops it's 10:00

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo, what's up doc? As I write this, it is Wednesday afternoon, and there are small wet flurries falling outside my window. Exciting stuff really, but it's been very cold the past couple of days.

Speaking of those past couple of days (I'm just the master of the segway, aren't I), here's what went down hommies g.

Ok, first for background, I have to get into a little bit of sappy background shit. Ok I guess technically I don't have to, but I have an emotional side to me, and in order to justify to myself all the money I've spent this week, I'm gonna dig through that. Right, well, a long long time ago, I was 14. And it was the time of my 15th birthday. And during the time leading up to, and the actual day of, my birthday that year, my mom was in the hospital, so I was living over at a friend's house. And I just remember feeling so alone for my birthday that year, and pretty crappy. I mean even staying at a friend's house right there, it felt like I was alone in the world and that was it. It was an empty feeling, and undoubtedly one of the worst in my life. And ya ya, I know I know, boo hoo boo hoo, but the point is that ever since then, I've been particularly sensitive to people unhappy around their birthdays. So when I see that, the nurturer within me wants to try to make things right and fun and special.

For those having birthdays out here, I guess I can see how it's kinda similar. And when it's an American's 21st birthday, it's kinda a big one. So given that it was Heather's birthday yesterday, we had some celebrating to plan, considering her not so secret longing to be back home to party. And just my nature of wanting people's birthdays to be special and memorable, but of course (said with a french accent).

Right so now that I've exposed you all to the emotional convoluted train wreck that is my inner workings, back to what actually exactly went on. So Monday morning I headed into town on my own to pick up a little gift of sorts, and then hurried back for class. I had International Retail Management, which was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that the young lady I sit with in that class was quite sick and coughing virtually the whole time. But hey, that kept me awake at least. Normally after that class, I have International Marketing from 5 pm - 8:15 pm, but for whatever reason, the teacher was absent that day so class was cancelled. Yippee. Kinda. I mean i'm all for classes being cancelled back home, but here we only have classes 8 times total. And because I'm an international student, I missed the first week. So - that one and - this one means only 6 sessions of that class! That's kinda ridiculous.

Anyway, seeing as we are somewhat the indecisve lot, the plans for where to go to kick off the birthday celebrations at midnight was left up to moi. Knowing of the madame's strong liking for shakin' her thang, a club was the first thing that came to mind. However, clubs here are not open on Mondays, so that was a no-go. Fortunately, the resourceful little bugger I am found online and in a guide a bar called Le Why Not that seemed nice and boasted a dance floor. Perfect, thought I, and so I delivered the message to the others that this would be the plan. And we arrived there, only to find that Le Why Not no longer exists. That's Why Not I guess. Fortunately, there were a couple of other bars in the area, and we ended up taking over a corner of a pub called Murphy's. We drank, and drank, and drank. After having had 2 beers back at residence before going, I started things off by splitting a keg between 4 of us guys, which meant about 2 and a half beers each. Once this was done, it was time for a midnight Happy Birthday round of vodka shots. And from there on, it was a combination of a couple of "girly" fruity mixed hard alcoholic beverages which ranged from awful to delicious. We all had a good time, thankfully including the birthday girl for whom we took turns ordering. Due to a stupid system of creating bills every time we ordered a drink, paying at the end of the night was a bit of a mess, not to mention the fact that we were all very drunk, so I ended up ponying up a pretty penny, both for my own "addition" and that of the celebree (not really sure you can say that, but I'm tired of racking my brain for synonyms). But it was worth it. Definitely the drunk-est I've been since arriving here, though I do have a very high tolerance.

The next day I was able to sleep in as I didn't have class. In the afternoon, I went about bringing in my sheets to trade them for clean ones, and did some laundry, AS THEY FINALLY FIXED THE GOD DAMN DRYERS! Yippee! I returned to my room to find out the amazing news that the 2008-2009 NHL All-Star game will be in none other than Montral, Quebec, Canada! Sure it may be 2 years away, but I now have plans for January 2009 and am exceptionally excited. Unfortunately, thinking about all of that also made me somewhat homesick. I mean it's not like I'm gonna be missing any of that, but I miss being in a city where that is HUGE news. You certainly don't hear about hockey everyday out here.

Anyway, that night called for the actual birthday dinner since it was actually her birthday that day. I was kinda up for trying somewhere new since we've only been out here for like not even 3 weeks, but the powers that be opted to head back to The Grill at the Tacquite D'Or that we ate at a couple weeks back. Not that this was a bad idea, as the restaurant is very good, nice, and reasonably priced. I had a nice cream vegetable soup, a bolognaise pasta dish, and then a delicious chocolate moose for dessert. Despite Heather's attempts to pay for her own meal, we would obviously have none of that, and this time around, due to people not having change, a 3 euro portion of my meal was picked up "accidentally" by others as well.

As an aside, one of the restaurants that I had looked into going to that night was called Les Brochettes en Folies. And this was relevant because the night before I had my first culture shock out here. Back home, the term chicken brochette is used regularly in english just like in french. Meat on a stick, that's a brochette. It's just what it's called. Well apparently, in places that don't speak French, no one uses that word. In fact, no one else out here knew what a brochette was at all. I couldn't believe that. It's a brochette............ It's like everything I've ever known is a lie! I don't know if I can exist in a world where brochettes don't! Ok ok enough melodrama.

Right so despite not going to bed too late last night, and having an alarm set for 7 AM this morning, somehow I slept in today. I'm not one to sleep through alarm clocks, but today I did it. When I woke up on my own, to quietness instead of the beeping of my alarm, I knew immediately I was late. I peeked optimistically at my clock, hoping to see something like 8:30 for my 9:00 class, but alas, it read 10 AM. I figured I could arrive at the break (10:30 am) and slip in then and just sign the attendance sheet as though I was there from the get-go. And so that's what I did, and AFAIK, it worked just fine.

And la la, c'est pretty much toute. The next few days are likely to be uneventful, as people want to save money and such as pretty much everyone is going to Amsterdam this weekend. Alas I didn't get on the school trip in time, and am not cool enough to find other people to get down there on my own with, so myself, Johnny, and Pedro will have to make the best of things back here in Ango.

Anyway, hope all you crazy Montrealers are living it up, and I'll speak to y'all soon enough.

Lots of love.

Danny K