Birthday

So Tuesday was my 21st birthday, which means nothing in Europe, but I still wanted to make sort of a deal about it.

So we went out to dinner in the upper city of Thessaloniki. By we, I mean me, my friends Taylor, Brittney, and Candy Dream (Andy, in case anyone reading this doesn't know how I refer to Andy). Taylor and Brittney are both from University of Iowa like Staci, my roommate and we've been hanging out quite a bit. I like them both a lot. I really like a lot of the people I've met here. But so the four of us went on a mission to get to the upper city because we've never walked up there before, we just took the bus last time, but so after one false start to a dead end, we found the road up there. It's a decent trek up a hill so we were all out of breath and talking about how we're out of shape. Taylor and Brittney were talking about how they need to get in shape before they go to Mt Olympus in a few weeks. But so we get up to the upper city, and it's starting to get dark and we see the few and it's completely worth the walk. This city is absolutely beautiful. It isn't the magic skyline of my lovely Chicago, and it isn't the American love that is New York City; it is something so foreign and it is near perfect for that. The sea and the city with it's red roofs and white walls and the church crosses standing out are something stunning to this Midwestern girl.

We picked the first restaurant we found and got a lovely view and attempted to take pictures of all 4 of us with the view and totally failed but whatever- when Taylor uploads the photos we did get (we asked the waiter to take one for us), you can see them on facebook. We started off the meal by ordering a bottle of wine (white, which I'm not the biggest fan of in reality) that tasted pretty decent with bread and tsasiki. But we all ordered our food after lots of random jokes about veal being seal meat for some reason and just continued to watch night fall and drink this wine that got increasingly worse as we drank it. Taylor and I ended up being the two to actually drink most of it. They brought out Taylor and Andy's veal, my souvlaki, which is basically pork on a skewer, and Brittney's grilled octopus. Yes, grilled octopus. It actually really did just taste like chicken pretty much. Not that I'd order it or anything, but it wasn't the worst thing I've ever tasted. But the wine was not a good match with anything any of us ordered. But we finished our meal, and the bottle of wine once we were done with the meal and had to walk back down to the apartments. The walk back down was much better.

So once we got back, we had about an hour and half to chill before we all were planning on going out. And when I say we all, I don't mean just the four of us, I mean basically most of the building. So many of us went out for my birthday. So as we're all getting ready, drinking and just hanging out kind of, I saw that people were signing a birthday card they had made for me which was really sweet. They just sort of sucked at keeping it a secret but it totally doesn't matter. And as we were all talking and this card got to one of the Greek kids that has been hanging out with us American students recognized that it really was my birthday and comes into the room and starts singing Happy Birthday to me in Greek, or the Greek equivalent of what we sing for happy birthday and he's super loud about it obviously and half way through he stops singing to do the whole European double cheek kiss thing and then continues the song (it's part of the song I think) and it was kind of adorable. How many people get sung to in Greek on their birthday? Well, how many non-Greeks do?

We eventually went to leave, me and a few other girls going outside to wait on other people and then one of the girls called me back inside and everyone was standing in the foyer with a piece of cake and a candle and they all sang Happy Birthday to me. It was super cute and it made me feel better about being away from home. Then we headed out to the reggae boat. We got on after a short wait, and then we sat at the dock for a long time. I was just having a blast talking and just hanging out and kinda dancing. But I got to sit on a boat on the Aegean Sea under a full moon on my 21st birthday with a free drink in my hand, which is pretty much awesome. I did miss my friends from home though.

Since it was a Tuesday night and we did have classes the next day, I headed home about 2:15 or so after the boat docked. I thought about hitting up the bar we'd gone to the previous Tuesday because Kristos said he'd get me free drinks for my birthday (because he works there) but it was late and I didn't feel I needed more alcohol. So I got home and got online and skyped with my mom and ate my absolutely delicious birthday cake.

Really, it was pretty tame as far as 21st birthdays go. But did anyone really expect anything else from me? I hope not.