BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!

My birthday was last weekend. I had such a good time. It really can't be put into words (much like most things here), but nevertheless I will try.
The weekend started out by going out to dinner with my class here. There is another girl in my class, Katharina, and she has the same birthday as me. We all had a very good time, or at least I did.
Then I went to a salsa bar with a bunch of other exchange students and liaisons. Three of my friends came in from Stuttgart. I even put on makeup, or rather, let my friends put makeup on me, which I never do. At midnight we were all dancing, and then as soon as the clock turned everyone just stopped and ran over to me and gave me hugs, and started shouting "Alles Gutes zum Geburtstag" (happy birthday). People I didn't know were coming up to me giving me hugs and telling me happy birthday. It was surreal and very funny. Plus Karla and Arthur had given me this ridiculous birthday hat. That they then made me where all night. I thought it was funny, becuase at Bryn Mawr we have a whole birthday tiara tradition, and here we have this birthday hat. Zoe and Tang made me a cake which was sooooooooo sweet of them and tasted sooooo good. Zoe also made me a Cd which I have since then greatly enjoyed listening to. Tang also gave me this thing that pops out of a box and says "I love you", which I found really funny because it's clearly directed for Valentines Day. It's also really good to scare people with ;) Chiara, Maridalys, and Francesco gave me this little adorable teddybear. Wissaf made me a scrapbook of sorts (with Cricket's help). It had a story in it and lots of pictures. It was extraordinarily thoughtful!!

Anyway so then we went home. And my host father woke us up at 9:45. I had two weeks earlier or so asked my host mother if Chiara and Maridalys my friends from Stuttgart could spend my birthday weekend at the house. She said yes. I asked my host father later if Karla, Tang, and Zoe could spend the night Friday. He said yes. I assumed the two had talked about it together. Apparently not.... Because when my host father woke us up it sounded something like this. "1,2,3,4,5,6,7...7!!!!!! You said three!!! Wake up!!!!! Breakfast in 15 minutes....10 minutes!!!!!"
It was VERY funny.

We had a big breakfast and then opened gifts. Then we took Meekah (my dog here) for a walk, and went to the playground. We came back to the house, took tons of photos, baked brownies, uploaded photos, and then more people came for cake and movies. :)

It was incredibly fun becuase it was the first time my friends from school, and the other exchange students that I'm friends with were together. They got along so well. It was great!
We watched movies until 9 or 10, then ate dinner, listened to Taylor Swift, and watched more movies until 1.

The next morning we (Chiara, Maridalys, Karla, Maria, and me) woke up at 9, because we had an AFS breakfast at 10. We then proceeded to meet everyone for breakfast, where we brought lots of non-AFSers with (friends from school, friends from language school). Breakfast was again amazing! Everyone who hadn't seen me Friday or Saturday came up to me and was like "Happy Birthday!" Birthdays are a big deal here...Not that they aren't in the U.S. but they seem to be bigger here. Sunday unfortunately also meant Chiara and Maridalys had to go back to Stuttgart :( No way around it, I was sad.

I was not looking forward to Monday. I was the first one in our classroom, but then every person who walked through the door came running to me and gave a huge hug and said "Happy belated Birthday!" Then one of my friends Renan even made me a cake! It was so sweet, and reminded me again of Bryn Mawr :)
It was an extremely good birthday!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you to all of my family in the U.S. who have sent me cards and gifts, etc.
Aunt Pat I LOVED the photo album from my going away party! The pictures of Sarah especially are precious!!!!