Who ever said BirthDAY, why not BirthWEEK?

I am dubbing this post birthday week to celebrate all the events that surrounded my birthday that were generally great and made turning 21 a memorable time.

Four days out, on April 20th, started off as all birthweeks should, with Pancakes! Thanks to an inpromto sleepover with the lovely Annabel, we teamed up for a bit of a deluxe breakfast. Afterwards, I got down to business with class, yoga, velib'ed home and then spent the rest of the afternoon in cleaning mode as preparation for the big birthday bash the following day. In the evening, Annie and Corina came round to lend a hand in the making of cupcakes, coupled with some good fun baking chats. I also had my first "mother-esque" experience of staying up late baking for the next days activity. Hopefully I don't have to do that too often!

April 21st: I call this birthday part 1. As my birthday is the 23rd and Daniel's is the 22nd, we had decided a while back to have a joint birthday. Bacause this also fell over Easter weekend, Thursday rather than Friday was deemed the best day for the event since most people were probably taking off for the long weekend. Hence, since the big bash was a couple of days early, and this was the great excitement, it felt like my birthday :) After finishing the last few cupcakes and small cleaning tasks, Daniel arrived and we made final plans regarding food etc. After dashing out for groceries, I managed to finish off research notes for an upcoming essay for Vichy France and even squeese in a great little run on this perfect sunny 23 degree afternoon. Talk about productivity! I was feeling on a roll! Before heading to 5pm class, Annie came over to pick up the food prep while I was away.

The Birthday Team! Daniel and I.

Vichy class flew by as I couldn't wait to get home and get the party started! The timing was coming together flawlessly. Changed, hair having thankfully cooperated, guests started to arrive slowly after 8:30. I also finally got to meet Daniel's girlfriend Anne, who's living in London, and she was lovely. Let's get the party started! I love being hostess, and between the doorbell ringing almost constantly, helping people with drinks, and serving up dinner of homemade lasagne (thanks Daniel!) and dessert (cupcakes!), the evening flew by. The apartment quickly filled up with probably close to 30 people! It was wonderful as all of my guests who were in town made, so pretty much all of my friends were there! I even received roses for the first time in years from Ilona - they were pink and beautiful! Never underestimate how happy flowers make me. Thanks to our great speakers we even got a bit of dance party going in the apartment. All in all a smashing success!

I have met some fantastic Finns! Ilona and I excited about my roses :)

Around 11:30 we gathered the troops and headed out, somewhat reduced to try our luck at a night of dancing at the Mix. With a good group, it was bound to be a great time. Unfortunately, this is only possible if the bouncers let your group in. One of the few times I have ever not gotten into a club - bad timing! Thankfully, Emmanuelle stepped up the plate and steered our group over to the Pachanga. It actually worked out quite nicely since there was lots of room on the dance floor but also tables for people to sit and chat. Everyone has said they had a good time. Me, my fun factor was catching up with me, and after making a valient effort on the dance floor, had a bit of a low moment, and Annie and I called it a night at about 1:30. The Out part of the night not as stellar but I guess thats par for the course. Probably for the best, since I went to sleep pretty much instantly upon arrival home. Overall, 21 party was a great night!

The next morning I remembered why I've been able to be so much more productive during the days, and feel like I've accomplished so much more this semester. It because I haven't been stuck on the couch feeling queasy multiple Fridays, Saturdays of Sundays. As much as I loved hungover days with Annie, maybe I don't love the hangover itself. The general tiredness and inability to to anything is always pretty entertaining though, and we seem to cook up amazing meals. This day was no different. Thank you delicious scrambled eggs and homefries for saving my life. The morning was made particularly funny when I stumbled upon Thibault who had stayed over and I had forgotten all about. Sons of Anarchy comforted us all afternoon as we slowly returned to normal selves by the evening and managed to clean up some of the disaster. In some ways I was really glad that today wasn't my birthday, and that now on the actual day, I'll be in good shape!

Saturday April 23rd, 2011: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! Sorry, I just love birthdays. It fills me with a nice little warm feeling of happiness all day. Nothing overly special needs to happen, but just knowing that its my birthday makes a regular day just a little bit nicer, and I appreciate that.

This particular birthday started off with a heap of fun, cleaning! I had to get up early in order to finish off party cleaning because I was headed to Bordeaux later that morning. It was actually great because everything was all clean, which makes me happy, I packed and got ready and was not rushed at any point in time. Ahh so calming. Minus a quick double back home to grab my train discount card, I caught the bus to the train station at Montparnasse (my metro line was closed over that weekend). Met my travelling team of Annie and Ayumi and had a great train ride down to the south of France enjoying countryside and getting into my newest book, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, by Gertrude Stein. It is one of the stangest styles of writing I have ever encountered with very funny punctuation. When I began, I really struggled, but now that I'm a bit further in, its actually quite interesting. Its all about their life in Paris meeting the leading artistic and literary circles of the early 20th century, including Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, and hundreds of others.

Anyways, we arrived in the beautiful town of Bordeaux around 3 in the afternoon, and after a bit of lost wandering, found our incredible apartment that Annie had booked for us. We had an amazing pad all to ourselves only a 10min walk from the center of town! After dropping our bags, we got some groceries and had some delicious baguette lunch before trying to head out and do some exploring around 6pm. We didn't even get 200m down the road when the first rain drops started falling. It was almost comical. Back we went. I actually wasn't too fussed bacause I find rain in the late afternoon rather soothing, and this also meant we could partake in one of my favorite activities - cards!

We had dinner reservations at a restaurent booked through La Fourchette across the river, and it worked out perfectly since the rain has stopped and left the air fresh and sky a pale pink as we walked through town along the river towards dinner. I knew already that Bordeaux was going to be incredible. Along the way we noted the notable Allee de Tourney, among other sites. On to dinner at a funky Brasserie, decorated 1930s France style. It was a perfect vibe, with great music. We all had great entrees and plats, myself the veal with rice in a savoury sauce over a lovely bottle of Chateau Loumede. It was a delicious dinner (plus 30% off -score!). At the end, Annie and Ayumi surprised me with gifts and a very entertaining birthday card. I got a fabulous vintage square scarf for my new scarf collection, and a beautiful fountain pen and notebook to encourage my new writing aspirations. It was so touching, and I was pretty much overcome by happiness. To be in France, in the beautiful town of Bordeaux on my birthday was incredible. On top of that, I was with my two closest friends from my two friend groups, the Capulets and the Montagues, except they like each other. Apparently I'm the friar, don't know how I feel about that one... It was a beautiful thing for me to have both groups represented on my special day.

Ayumi in L'Alcazar, awesome birthday resto.

My better half, the lovely Annabel Waters.

It got better. We finally headed for home after our 2 1/2 hour meal and emerged into a beautiful evening. It was stunning to be on the far side of the river and see Bordeaux, especially Place de la Bourse all lit up across the water. Talk about breathtaking. It was wonderful walking back across the river and to our apartment under the lights. I can truly say it was one of the loveliest nights possible, a cap to a very nice day. In my mind, that's exactly what a birthday should be!

Places de la Bourse lit up at night. Talk about gorgeous.

One thing that was weird about the day was the lack of phone calls to my family. Its on special days like these that I miss you guys most. However, I did enjoy all the lovely messages from friends over facebook and email.

Onto the real first day of exploring Bordeaux! There is no better was to start a full day of adventures and touristing than a big breakfast complete with toast! Toast is not a big thing in France, and surprisingly enough, we all realized how great toast is an how me missed it. Also how my dad was right after all these years and tomatoes on toast is actually pretty delicious. Apparently now that I'm 21 I can appreciate these things.

P.S. Really annoyed because the computer was acting up and I lost the second half of this post and had to rewrite it all! Very lame. To add insult to injury I had copied and pasted the unsaved section to a word doc, but had thought in the end it had saved online so didn't save it. Stupid! Now somehow I have to recapture my carefully written prose of the previous time. Here it goes!

We then hit the streets to see all the notable touristic sites of this lovely town. We walked through the flea market at Esplanade des Quinconces before taking in the boardwalk and Place de la Bourse in the daylight. Then after stopping by the Cathedral St Andre and hiking up to the top of the Tour Pey-Berland to see the city from above. We hit up the Hotel de Ville (nothing beats Paris' though), we made our way over to the flea market at St Michel. I always like a good flea market, and we enjoyed touring around, and all snagged some faded French paperbacks for some reading down the road. It was a great morning with glorious weather, and while all these sights were impressive, it was the quiet streets of Bordeaux and the multiple small squares that pop up everywhere that captured my heart. By the time we had done all this, the hunger was upon us, and we enjoyed some very delicious Thai food, myself revelling in pad thai. Food in Paris is scrumptious, there lacks easily accessible, cheap ethnic food, so this was a real treat.

Ayumi and Annie exploring the flea market at St. Michel.

We continued to see a few things such as the Grand Theatre on our way back to the apartment to make some plans for the evening and take a little rest, since touristing is in fact quite tiring. I then took a splendid hour long nap on the couch while Ayumi and Annie were busy planning. I did rouse by 4 or, and we took off again to check out Palais Gallien, ruins of an ancient Roman Amphitheatre. Bordeaux was first settled in 300BC! After appreciating this site, we headed to the Public Gardens/Park just around the corner from the house to do some reading and lounging, but no more than 5 minutes after our settling in dark clouds converged overhead and we made a beeline back to apartment and barely missed the downpour. Like I said about Saturday, this didn't particularly bother me since it meant more relaxing at our sweet pad, proper vacation style, and more card playing! Somehow, much to my chagrin, I managed to lose Oh Hell to Ayumi after leading the whole game!

Ruins of Palais Gallien

Cards away we set to work to make an unconventional easter feast: A rose sauce pasta with fresh fettucine, aubergine (eggplant), courgette (zuchinni), leek, chicken and cheese. It was absolutely delicious! We bided time before our evening film at the theatre by watching political satire clips on youtube. How Colbert and Rick Mercer do make me laugh. Then, we took a pleasant night walk over the theatre to watch Mon Pere est Femme de Menage (My father is a cleaning lady). The plot revolves around a teenage boy who is looking for a role model in his adolescent, and his best option is his father. Over the course of the film, the boy comes to appreciate his father's love and coming to terms with his humble career. While this might sound like a promising, touching film, we kept waiting for something to happen. It was a little bit of a fail. However, between the pathetic sister who's trying to make it as a pageant girl, and the boy worrying about the size of his cue, we certainly got some laughs out of it. Enough that rehashing it on the walk home had us in histerics. Bedtime featured girltalk sleepover style which is always appreciated.

After making the most massive breakfast ever in an attempt to finish off our food, we headed up the road to try and check out the Museum of Contemporary Art. Unfortunately, being both a Monday and a holiday, we were bi-losing on that account. To comfort ourselves, we strolled up the boardwalk and enjoyed tea and coffee under the sun on a nice patio. After, we made our way back to the botanical gardens at a leisurely pace, and then after checking them out, we settled in for some cards and sunning. It really was glorious out. I had a brief brush with losing my shirt, no such bad luck befell me and we ended up at the tourist info office at 2 to embark on our 4hour wine tour, on one of the most touristy things I've done all year. While normally I try to avoid such displays of being a foreigner, in the name of the wine, I was willing to compromise.

The public gardens where we soaked up some rays

Departing on a coach, we toured through lovely countryside on our way out to the Bourg/Blaye region. Bordeaux has 5 wine regions - Bourg/Blaye, St Emilion, Graves, Medoc and Entre-Deux-Mers. The soil in these different regions affects the types of wines produced. There are 72 different appelations of wine in the region and over 7000 vineyards, most of which are family-operated. Our 50min drive took up past gorgeous rolling hills covered in new vines and past rivers and cute rural homes. It was a gorgeous region, and soon enough we arrived at our first stop, Chateau Monconseil-Gazin, where we met our host Micheal. Vineyards of all sizes in Bordeaux get to assume the title Chateau. This vineyard has been in his family for over 200 years, and they produced both white and red Cotes de Blaye wines. After discussing the process of selecting tending the vines, which can grow up to 10cm in a week in spring, and the harvesting of the grapes, we moved inside to the cellar where there were dozens of huge barrels of wine that were in the process of fermenting. The barrels are of French oak, and the porrous nature of the wood allows for excellent oxygen exchange to age the wine over 12 to 18 months. Each barrel is 600 euros a pop, and Bordeaux producers, in order to maintain the highest quality of wine, replace their barrels every 5 years! A mighty expensive little endeavor. Bext came the best part of all - la degustation. We sampled a lovely light white and two nice reds while Micheal went over the proper method of fully tasting a wine. Thanks to Etienne's tutelage at earlier salon de vins, I was already a pro at using many senses in evaluating the wine - seeing, smelling of of course tasting.

Picturesque Bordeaux Vineyards

French Oak Barrels

La degustation du Vin au Chateau Monconseil Gazin

We were soon sheparded back to bus and over a ridge into the Cotes de Bourg region were we visited the Chateau Rouselle. Our host, Vincent, had a very different story than Micheal. He had in fact bought the vineyard only 11 years previous because of his love of wine. He led us on tour of the vats in which the wine is stored and processed, and emphasized yet again how important the cultivation of the grapes are in making reds. Without grapes of the finest quality, the battles is already largely lost. I enjoyed that all his vats took on the names of the dwarves from Snow White. He was quite a character, with mad scientist hair and a jolly disposition.

The travelling team with Vincent.

Back on the bus and a sleepy ride back to town before saying goodbye to Ayumi who was taking a covoiturage back to Paris. Meanwhile, Annie and I returned keys and decided to check out a very funky looking restaurent on our way out of town that we had spotted on Saturday's La Fourchette search but had been unable to make a reservation. L'Antre de Peggy lived up to the intrigue with magic garden style decor, and we enjoyed another lovely meal before beelining it to the station to catch our train with a whole 2 minutes to spare. Tons of time! Back to Paris for the crunch week of essays - and I even missed the last metro and got to velib home! A truly perfect weekend with close friends - I couldn't have asked for more over my 21st!

Inside l'Antre de Peggy.

Cut to the Chase

I could go on with excuses about the slack on the blog front, but I think we all know that I feel bad for my failures of keeping up to date and continually seem to fall short of my goals in this regard. It seems this pesky thing called life, and living, keeps preoccupying me and taking away from my time alloted to blogging. Good thing classes finally finished this week (May 9th) so I have some extra unallocated time which I have decided to divide between museums, studying for my upcoming exam and blogging! Let the words flow forth!

Monday April 11th: A day to tie up loose ends from the weekend. I finished my readings for Sport and Politics and headed to class. Afterwards, I chatted with Rook about the Paris-Roubaix and the class. Again, I've really appreciated having a closer relationship with a teacher. Definitely going to try and keep in touch and use it for reference purposes come grad school time. After eating my salad in the Sciences Po garden, I hit the library to edit my paper and officially finish it a whole 3 weeks early! I did some blog work (last time I posted) before heading home for dinner with my beaugosse colloc Etienne over some episodes of Scrubs.

Tuesday after dealing with some good old UBC transfer credit mixups that cost me an hour of my life, I headed to school for my longstanding Lina's Lunch date with Daniel and then ballroom. Only one week left before our big performance, and I'm feeling pretty good about our line up of Cha Cha, Tango and Quick Step. In order to motivate the return to the library at 5pm, Ilona and I hit up Monoprix for a little viennoiserie. After a treat like that, I always bring my game face to the apple store (our library). I got down to business with my sport and politics research for my paper. It seems my attempts to refine my sources for my question only led me in more circles. This can be a problem when your very specific angle, like American television network influence on the Olympic programme, hasn't been as widely written on academically. I think I did make some headway though, or at least eliminated a lot of possibilities. I also observed different types of library frequenters. When I come to the library I get into a zone, put my head down and work concertedly for a length on time. This level of exertion is the reason I don't spend infinite amounts of time at the library, or come that frequently. The other type is Ilona. She spends entire days at the library, but features many distractions including numerous library friends coming to say hi and commiserate, facebook etc. For her, the library is both social and work. I'd rather seperate the two into distinct catagories. Work seperate from play. Then the breaks feel real and restful. Speaking of breaks, when I did make it home by 9 I had some dinner and then curled up with Breakfast at Tiffany's in bed.

One thing about my relationship with the library is wariness of what I like to call library burnout. Too much library wears me down spiritually so I have to mix up my study locations in order to get max efficiency. Hence why I avoided the lin this wednesday morning before Structues and Crises class and yoga. Afterwards, I returned for a meeting for my Vichy France term paper, and we sorted out division of labour and content of our essay on Cinema and memory. While I wasn't very keen on the idea of a group paper when it was assigned, I'm appreciating it now when it means that with planning out of the way, its going to be a quarter of the work of my other papers. Sa-weet! Work completed, Annie and I teamed up for yet another fantastic dinner of salmon with roasted baby potatoes and zuchini. Deliciousness. I am going to miss my better half in the kitchen dearly next year. We eat so well together. Afterwards, David rolled up and we had a school comparison party, at which point I showed them the UBC LipDub video made earlier this fall. If you haven't seen it, go to youtube and do so, because its freaking awesome. Libdubs are one-continuous shot to music. Ours involves thousands of students dancing all around campus, a scuba session in the pool and a helicopter. All financed by donations and volunteers. It makes me proud to be from UBC. In 5 days it already half a million hits. Not too shabby. Tom finally made his appearance and we settled down to watch Despicable Me. It was really cute and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. Hehe.

Sadly, for the next two Thursdays, swimming has been cancelled! Oh no! In the end it was all ok since I worked hard on paper all morning before doing some cleaning and running before my Vichy Class. It was all good until I got my midterm back and didn't do so well. It doesn't happen that often that I think I kill a test I studied for when in fact I didn't. This annoyed me to no end, especially since the profs didn't really point out where I needed to improve. I proceeded to rant over beers with Daniel at Le Basile. At 9 we headed north to meet the crew and check out some of the good bar seen by Canal St Martin. Unfortunately, it seems this was a popular idea and so no bar around there could handle the size of our group! While we waited for everyone to arrive, we decided to chill in a Tabac. A tabac is a small convenience store that sells cigarettes and lottery tickets, and occasionally serves alcohol. This particular one was fairly large and featured a sizeable seating area, hence why we sat down and profited from the very cheap drinks. We ended up sitting all night, much to the fascination of the various greasy middle aged men at the bar who were clearly regulars. One even wanted a picture with us, which we naturally declined. All in all a entertaining time with Eva, Daniel, David, Tom, Annie and myself. Called it a night at 11:30 in order to get a good night's sleep in advance of another busy weekend.

Friday April 15th: I managed to pull myself out of bed at a reasonable hour in order to get down to some reading, deciding it was necessary to take a break from all my essay studying. By 2, I was off to meet Fran and Annie for some gala dress shopping along Rivoli. Despite having budgeted 4 hours, none of us had any success, or at least if you evaluate it in terms of dress finding. We all managed to make off with some good cheap spring finds though. I seem to have packed a distinctive lack of summer clothes. Normally I come home before it is rightly summer, and I didn't really take into account last september how warm it would be getting over here in the summer. Add in the effect of some baguette eating and a few of my old numbers are none to comfortable for wearing and it was getting to be a bit of an issue. Accordingly, I've been able to pick up a few skirts and dresses on the cheap so now I'm all covered! I stopped by Annie's briefly afterwards to borrow a dress for an upcoming party next week before heading over to Lauren Bailey's for a little family dinner. Pedro, Poullette, Ayumi and us Lauren's whipped a mighty fine meal with homemade guac, salad, rice and cajun chicken with real cajun spice courtesy of Lauren's texas roots. It was lovely for our whole group to get together and catch up, reminisce about our friends we miss and of course play some old music and dance! It really was a great night, and I know we're all so stoked for the reunion trip in Helsinki! More family birthday cards greeted me when I got home :)

Family Dinner with Pedro, Poullette, LB and Ayumi.

Getting silly with Dance Hats!

Saturday dawned sunny and bright, and this somehow convinced me to stay inside temporarily and finish off my Monday readings by 11. After picking up some groceries for the week I had lunch with Etienne, Loic, and Marie, Etienne's sister who is visiting for a few nights. After, I finally got back to some work on my essay, and its starting to take shape in my mind, which is always a promising sign. Then, it was out to the streets to try and find a gala dress. None of my friends are really my size so borrowing wasn't going to be a good option. This was my last chance to hunt because the next two weeks will really be crazy with work and social activities. I had a recommendation of a small store along Rue St. Dominique and then to try the largest H&M on Champs Elysees. I enjoyed the afternoon of walking around outside, and even stumbled upon Place du Canada while walking up towards to Champs Elysees! After dealing with the hectic change room lines, I finally found success in a lovely cream coloured dress - you'll see pictures in an upcoming post. Best of all, it was only 40 euros and I found a great pair of shoes to match for only 20! Now that is great shopping! Afterwards, I headed back to Corina's for a little chat, which is always nice and we of course discussed plans for the future etc. I also learned about a terrible Sciences Po tragedy, which I will get into detail a bit more. The implications of it, didn't hit me right away, and so though saddened, I was able to carry on with things much better. After a quick dinner at home, I headed up to Oberkampf to go to a cool bar called Pop In with Annie, Tom and David. It was a great bar with lots of personality, cheap beer, and a small cave downstairs that served up some good dancing. It was really an ideal solid Saturday night, complete with last metro.

I got up and headed straight out the door on Sunday morning for a run before heading to my neighbourhood farmer's market to pick up some supplies for a picnic at Bois de Vincennes. Buddy Program had had a meet and greet there in the fall, but I didn't really get a chance to explore so I was keen to go back. Basically it was a perfect day with great friends. Beautiful spring weather and low twenties, picnic lunch by a pond, walk through an incredible tulip garden, fooling around in the playground, walking through a massive forest, playing Nerfball in an giant field in front of Chateau Vincennes, actually paying a toll to cross a river and my first experience in a real old-fashioned row boat. You couldn't ask for a better day, one of the happiest of Paris this term, or perhaps the year. All throughout I kept on exclaiming how days like this nourish the soul. I also found out Annie has no idea what real lemonade it (she thinks its sprite poor girl), and Jordana makes sexy faces rather than happy faces. I also got some more bad news about the tragedy, and spent part of the day comforting Ilona. I think I fully realized how sad it was on the metro home, and got a bit down for the rest of the night. Talking to the family, Sunday dinner with Etienne and listening to Phish over a bottle of wine was soothing. By the end of the night, Etienne and I even talked French and Canadian politics. Weird ending to a magnificent day.

David amongst the beautiful tulips.

Throwbacks to childhood mischief.

Deftly maneuvering our rowboat. Totally in control.

Monday the 18th was a day of a very heavy heart. In the early hours of the previous Thursday, three Sciences Po exchange students died in an apartment fire in the 20th arrondissement. Though we didn't learn all of the details until the memorial this morning, it was revealed that they had been at a soiree at a friends house. Around 3am, a fire started in the lobby of the building, and caught the gas pipe and shot up the stairs (all wooden). Hearing the commotion the party opened the doors and people were forced to jump out of 5th floor windows into the street trying to escape. Police suspected arson. Two of the girls died, and one was in critical care at the hospital. One of the victims, Jasmine, had been in two of my classes first term, History of Chile and French associations. We always chatted in the halls, and she was a lovely girl. The girl in hospital, Grace, had been my partner for the debat only a few weeks ago, and I had just been talking to her on the previous Monday. Needless to say, this tragedy really shook me, and the entire exchange community. We're not very big, but we're so interconnected, and by the end of the year, everyone seems to know everyone to some extent. The senselessness and abruptness of the deaths was shocking, and everyone was put in their shoes, unable to comprehend how lives so full of promise, coming to Paris to spend the year of their lives could suddenly just be over. The parents pain was unimaginable.

That Monday morning was a memorial service at Sciences Po. I attended with Annie and Ilona. All of Boutmy was packed. It was an emotionally heavy service, and it was hard seeing their close friends, many of whom were good friends of mine, describe how incredible these girls were. It makes you realize how short life is, and how we have to appreciate the people around us, and take advantage of our opportunities and blessings here. I can attest that these young women will not be forgotten. I have since learned that Grace, who suffered from broken bones and intense burns, has been making a great recovery in the hospital.

Somehow, I had to go to class afterwards at 12:30. I had lunch with Eva and we discussed how the pain was felt collectively by the whole exchange community. I had to fight back tears all day, and had a massive headache. Somehow, I took my mind off things by pholosophically blogging about the importance of family, and friends as your family. By the time I got home, I was in a quiet mood, but the headache was slowly receeding. That night, I also watched on of the first French movies I've watched while in France (shame on me). It was "Le premier jour du reste de ta vie), and I have to say it was really great. It was full of laughter and tears as a family grows up together and individually. It was what I needed to take my mind off things. I plan on trying to watch more films in French over the coming weeks.

It funny how mothers are often right about many things. One of which is that a good night's sleep will make things brighter in the morning. After being drained yesterday, I woke to a beautiful sunshine and I know that I can't keep carrying this sadness with me. Its important to go on living my life to the fullest as a tribute to the beautiful girls whose lives were cut terribly short. I headed to Daniel's early in the morning to practice ballroom before our performance later that day. The performance was at 12:30, and I felt so special since a number of friends came and watched and took pictures - thanks Annie, Corina, Eva and Lincoln! Daniel and I performed without fault and it was splendid, a really great time, and we got to watch some of the other dance styles and do some group line dancing! After, we grabbed some lunch and ate in the garden together. Then it was library session to write my entire Sports Essay! Except for a hot chocolate break with Annie and Ilona around 5, I managed to write the entire thing in one go! As expected, I was very thrilled with myself. At 9:15 I called it a day and Annie and I went home to cook up some delicious dinner and then for some silly reason she convinced me to introduce her to Sons of Anarchy...

All for now!

P.S. Very proud of two in two days!