Friday, February 12, 2010

birthday :)

I know I complained like all get-out in my last post about how crap my birthday eve morning was, but thanks to the wonderful friends and people I've been lucky enough to meet and know here, I had the best 21st birthday I could possibly have asked for!

Wednesday was just a crap, struggly day all around.  I was not focused in class, my foot was excruciatingly painful and I was feeling very homesick and far away from my friends and family.  After Charlie and Kate ID'd my problem as a likely case of plantar fasciitis (something to do with ligaments and tendons that sounds really gross and unpleasant), I hobbled across Trafalgar Square to a Boots pharmacy and bought some awesomely old-lady orthopedic shoe inserts, then took the Tube to Chancery Lane.  This still left me with about a 10-15 minute walk back to the flats, and at that point I was in sheer misery...I completely lost it and burst into tears walking down the street just down-in-the-dumps about EVERYTHING in general.  So as I'm walking along bawling like a baby, this lovely, lovely Englishwoman fell in beside me and talked to me about how "everyone has those utterly rubbishy days" and "nothing can be all that bad, love," and she cheered me up a bit.  As did Colin Firth (!!) in the delightfully long A&E miniseries of "Pride and Prejudice," which I immediately parked myself in front of when I got home.

After I had talked to my WONDERFUL AMAZING MOM (love you!) for way too long on a 26¢-a-minute line, Nicole asked me if I wanted to go to Isaac's flat to watch a movie.  It sounded like just the thing to make a bad day better, so we headed over there.  Turns out it was a surprise birthday-eve party!!  I was so excited and...duh, surprised, to see so many of my friends in the London Program had come over to celebrate as the clock turned midnight and I turned 21.  We had some delicious chocolate cake, and of course the ubiquitous Lambrini 1.50 pound wine and some Strongbow Cider!  I was a much happier camper by the time I went to bed.

Thursday morning I woke up to the most brilliant sunshine streaming into my room and my vaseful of daffodils blooming on my nightstand...my birthday was the sunniest, prettiest day I've seen yet in England, which seems appropriate ;)  I got dressed and opened all my birthday cards from my parents, Grandma Marsh, and Cait, and took the bus with the lovely Kate Gardner to the London Centre.  After a stop in Café Canova for an almond croissant (YUM), I was surprised at the Centre by some absolutely gorgeous flowers from somebody special :D which made my morning a very happy one.  Looking for a good way to celebrate a birthday lunch, some of us headed for the ultimate cliché destination: McDonalds.  It was an excellent little taste of home, as awful as it is.

Work came next, because interns can't get the day off for something so small as a birthday...but BBDO and the lovely Helen, the CFO's PA, had planned a surprise birthday tea for me!  There was amazing chocolate cake with those little sparkly silver things on top and white-chocolate stars, truffles that melted in your mouth, awesomely good tea (BBDO makes the best cup of tea I've found yet in London), and a birthday card signed by everyone in the office.  I was so surprised and it was so much fun to get a bit of celebration with all my new friends at the office...what a special and memorable thing for them to do :)

A few of the girls in the Program came to meet me after work for fish and chips dinner at The Golden Hind.  Amazing food again, and a really funny story: we were in the more private room in the basement and were being moderately loud and silly and exuberant (because, duh, it was my birthday!) and this old man who was also down there with a younger woman got really angry at us for being too loud.  We were cut off mid-laugh by his extremely vehement exclamation of "DO you MIND?!" and his companion's bitchy "You're being exceedingly LOUD!"  We all were ashamed for about 30 seconds, then got angry that he had been so rude with so little provocation (we weren't being anywhere near completely obnoxious...because, clearly, American girls can be VERY completely obnoxious if we try!).  Thankfully, we had finished eating and were able to head out quickly...what a party pooper!  We went and did a little tipsy shopping of H&M and I got a great deal on a really fun dress to wear later that night for my party!

Birthday partying happened at O'Neills, the most cliché-ly American of all bars in London, masquerading as an Irish pub.  With a live band on Thursday nights, it's THE destination for London Program-ers.  This was my first time so we had double-fun!  I danced a lot, drank a lot of delicious "snakebites," which are a combination of hard cider and beer and taste delightful, and got wished "Happy Birthday" more times than I could possibly count...it seemed like the whole program was there! Although I was celebrating this biggest-of-all-birthdays in England, where the legal age is 18, I had a very American-y night, which was actually really fun for a 21st birthday.  The other nice perk of being the birthday girl?  You drink for free.  Best night EVER.  :)

Long story short, although this is already ridiculously extensive and if you made it this far you're a winner...I am so grateful to everybody who texted, called, Facebooked, emailed, sent a card and most of all celebrated here in London with me over the past few days.  I was nervous that turning 21 would be a letdown celebrating far from home without all my closest friends, especially since it's a totally anticlimactic age to turn here...but everybody made it so amazing and special and memorable that I had the best possible of all birthdays!

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