In Which John Has Two Birthdays and Gets a Present

At midnight, my roommates and I were in the middle of bonding. We'd take turns asking questions and sharing stories. Vanessa (or "Ness," since Australians shorten everything) does not know what animal represents her. She was thus shamed from the discussion.

Before I went to bed, I noticed that my parents had wished me a Happy Birthday at Australian midnight.

Then came the actual day itself.

I was looking forward to the day, even though I knew it'd be long. After lunch, I had my first class, a 2-hour lecture about the First Australians. Of course it was boring, but at least I know someone in the class now, which always seems to make classes better.

Afterwards, I had to go straight to my next class about Australian Media for another hour. It was fine, we watched some Australian commercials, but I was anxious to get through the class because up next was...

Improv! I found the improv group, and finally got to feel at home, if only for 45 min. But since I had another class to go to, I could only stay for the warm-up portion and had to miss out on playing games.

Up next was my English discussion. Everyone in my section is majoring in Early Education. Everyone struggled with basic grammar. It seems so weird having grown up with this stuff in school, that you don't realize not everyone had the same upbringing as you. Still, I can sense that I'll go crazy when I'm 2 months in and people still haven't grasped the difference between an adverb and an adjective.

Afterwards I had to go to yet another audition. The day before I had done the dancing audition for Cabaret and today I had to do the singing portion. I think it went well. I had to do an American accent. I nailed it. I also had to do a German accent. I tried to imitate Beicken, but I ended up sounding more like my Polish Joke character. Oh well. We'll see what happens with that soon.

By this point, I was feeling a little bummed. It feels weird having gone most of your birthday without seeing anyone who knows you and can wish you a Happy Birthday. But fortunately, my roommates are my family, and they had ordered many pizzas for dinner. A couple of my roommates' friends came over. I don't know whether I can definitively call them my friends yet, even though I've seen them a lot. There's Adelle (the attractive, funny one), Sophie (the attractive, funny one), and Steff (the attractive, funny one...hmm, maybe all Aussie girls are the attractive, funny one). They made me a birthday card out of construction paper. It says "Have a whale of a time..." and there's a cutout of a whale. (I said it was a fish, because it's tail was vertical instead of horizontal, but Adelle pointed out that it had a blowhole, so she was right.)

For some reason, I really like this card, probably more than I should. If you haven't noticed, the title of this post (as well as all the others) is based on the way the chapters are titled in old novels, especially Winnie-the-Pooh. In the chapter "In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents," Eeyore informs Pooh that it is his birthday, and Pooh tells Piglet, so they both decide to get him gifts. Pooh likes honey, so he thinks a pot of honey will be a good gift. But, being Pooh, he eats all the honey and is left with an empty jar. So he decides that should be the gift. Piglet gets an old balloon that he has leftover from his own birthday, put it pops before he reaches Eeyore. Nevertheless, Eeyore accepts both gifts (he uses the jar to store the popped balloon) and treasures them. I'm going to treasure this card.

After pizza, we had white chocolate cake. I'm not a fan of cake, but I loved this cake. Australian cake is better than your cake. My roommates put 21 sparklers on the cake. They went out before I had a chance to make a wish. The smoke alarm went off.

Then we watched a bunch of YouTube videos.

So that was my first 21st birthday.

Around this time, slow Americans started realizing it was my birthday, so I spent most of today reading Facebook birthday messages. It's always funny to see who leaves you those. Sometimes it's people you haven't spoken to in years or just don't really know who write only "happy birthday." No thought or effort, you kind of wonder why they bother. Sometimes you get people who try to start conversations, "Happy Birthday, tell me all about Australia!" I'm sorry, but you should've asked for that before I had to wade through this sea of wall posts. I like the ones with a little flair, or, if you're like Allie, ones that show up on Facebook, on AIM, and on Skype.

The best one wasn't a Facebook post though, it was an e-mail from Ness. Even though she already celebrated my birthday, she sent a message including pictures from the two nights previously mentioned and a link to the song that "Michael Jackson" and Bart wrote for Lisa's birthday. And since Vanessa loves reading this blog, I felt I should mention her a lot so she knows she's special.

So that was my second 21st birthday.

As for the actual events of today that happened after it stopped being my birthday in America? I helped paint the set for a show that opened tonight, then I went to a block party and learned that Aussies don't believe in napkins (especially Vanessa), and then I saw the show that opened tonight. But that was so amazing that I'm going to save it for the next post.