Sunday, November 8, 2009

Cuarto Siglo - Quarter Century

Well, the dreaded 25th birthday finally came and went! I am officially a quarter century old now. How can it be!?
For my last day as a 24 year-old, I worked (of course) and then met my friend Heather at our regular bar by our house for a drink. Because we get coffee there almost every day, we know the bartenders like friends, and so we stayed there until it was midnight. They put some candles into a pastry they had and sang me happy birthday in English when the clock struck 12. The bartenders are Argentinian and Brazilian, so I was suprised they knew the whole song! I kept saying I feel so old, I feel so old (me siento tan vieja) but everyone there was older than me, so that was nice haha! This picture is of me, Heather and our favorite bartender - Ignacio - but he goes by Nacho haha.

It was an early night but still held a lot of action. My camera that I only bought in April all of a sudden had a Lens Error!! We all know my life is basically impossible without a camera, so the next morning, after talking to Cannon over the phone and them telling me I have to send it to the USA to fix it, I went and brought a new camera. Happy Birthday to me! I figure I will send me bad camera to be fixed and when I get back I can do something with an extra one, but since it was going to almost 2 months to fix and ship back and forth from here, it would just be better to get a new one. I made sure to buy it in the morning, so I could charge the battery all day, and have it ready for my big celebration on Friday night!

On Friday, I went to class and then after work met up with 12 friends to go to a sidreria. You might remember from an earlier blog, when my friend Dave came, we went to a sidreria - or a cider house. This is the place where they have cider in barrels and you help yourself to however much you want, and it comes straight out of the barrel and you catch it in your cup and drink it with your delicious steak dinner. About 10 of the 12 friends that came had never been to a sidreria before, so it was a blast to be with people who were experiencing it for the first time! It's always a blast!

It was quite a mix of people - me, Madeline (London), my friend Theresa from Spanish class (Germany), Madeline's roommates that I am friends with Mattias (Sweeden), Maxime (France) and Xavier (Guatemala) and my friend Arjen (Holland) and his friends. It was quite an international English-speaking party and everyone was really fun! Madeline, was so sweet and called ahead and ordered me a cake and they brought it out and every sang Happy Birthday and then we all said Cheers in our own respective languages! Cheers, Prost (German), Skol (Sweedish), Salud (Spanish), Proost (Dutch) and Sante (French). The best part about the cake was that the waitress, really worried, came to Madeline and said 'I'm so sorry, but we don't have numbers to make 25 on the cake. We only have numbers for 24 or 26...which do you want?!'. I overheard this and quickly made sure I got the 24. Don't want to make myself seem older than my already quarter century!

After the sidreria closed we took taxis to the old part and partied until 7am in the morning and then had a small party at my house and finally went to sleep at about 8am! See, 25 year olds can still have fun!! After falling asleep at 8am, I was pretty much dead for the entire day, but was happy to spend my first real day as a 25 year old in my bed watching movies with my friends! We made tacos and unsuccessfully tried to make rice pudding, which we eventually went to the bar and bought some ha. Today, however, was quite a different story. We had winds up to 50mph and my friend Heather and I decided it would be a great day to go for a walk to see the waves.

We decided to walk to the big mountain in the old part so we could see the huge waves crashing into the side of the island. They had shut down the street that we normally walk and drive on because the waves are SO big that they pull cars off the road. From the mountain, it was a great view, however quite wet. The waves kept crashing and crashing, and we would get the leftover water debri, so now that I am home, my whole face tastes like salt water haha. The wind was SO strong that you could lean forward with all of your body weight and the wind would hold you up!

We hiked around a bit - in our winter jackets and boots of course - and everything was going great with a little mist from the waves and then BOOM thunder and a hail storm! After being pelted with little hail balls, we decided that our little windy excursion was over and headed to dry off and have some dinner!

I came home at about 9:30pm and was SO tired from all the walking against the wind that I was so sleepy that I actually took a two hour nap! I guess that's what 25 year olds do haha. Now it is 1:20am and I just got out of the shower and finishing up the blog and will go back to sleep. I just wanted to tell you about my birthday and my first days as a 25 year old! Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes :)

Besos!
Amanda

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