Birthday girl

Oh yeah!  For two days, I was the birthday girl here in Berkeley.  Is that a good enough excuse for spending so much time without writing a post?  I hope so.  If not, that's fine.  Last week, it was already an excuse for lots of other things, such as:

- having Pedro, Miguel and Rita visiting for a few days;

- receiving tons of messages, phone calls, skype calls and Facebook posts throughout the 30 hours that made my birthday, starting at 0:00 in Portugal and finishing at 12:00 pm here in California;

- being awarded with many hugs, kisses and even presents from my nice friends in Berkeley;

- having two relaxed days, Friday (after my 10 am midterm) and Saturday, without even touching any book;

- organizing a potluck dinner with my closest friends in I-House and a cocktail night with lots of other people;

- being surprised with a postcard from my dear classmates, a few letters in the mailbox, some roses from Pedro and kiwis (oh, how I missed kiwis!) from Mico and Rita;

- receiving money from Mom and Dad to buy an iPhone 5 as soon as the unlocked version is released, and from my aunts, uncles and grandparents to buy whatever I want;

- eating whatever I wanted;

- asking Miguel and Pedro to give me massages all the time;

- etc., etc., etc.

My potluck dinner was one of the best dinners I had here in Berkeley.  Luisa, Yasmina, Pedro and I went to the supermarket in the afternoon and we gathered with my other best friends around 6:30/7:00 pm. Everyone cooked or pretended to help organizing our dinner, some way or another.  Around 8:30 pm, we had the following dishes on the table: Coronation Chicken (cooked by Yas), Mushroom Risotto (cooked by Claudia), Mediterranean Salad (prepared by me), mini steaks (cooked by Mico and Rita) and sausages (bought by Pedro but cooked by them as well), a quiche (bought by Mike and Huw), nachos and tomato dip (bought by Mario), some bread and cheese (provided by Pedro), an Egyptian dish (brought by Nour) and a few Middle East dishes, such as warm pitta bread with olive oil and spices and a few typical dips (prepared by Nour, Nathalie and Taymour), and a selection of fresh fruit (bought by Emre).  Not to mention the sangria prepared by Nico, Coke and Ludo and the watermelon cocktail made by Taymour.  For the dessert, we had Rita's apple crumble and pear crumble and Luisa's pear in wine, accompanied with vanilla ice cream.  Does this sound yummy enough?  It was more than yummy!  Daniel was the only one who didn't bring anything but he has the excuse of working harder than anyone else for school.

Around 9:30 pm, other people started coming and our night was made of preparing and drinking cocktails, dancing a lot, playing pool, taking pictures, and singing happy birthday at midnight.  I even had a cake with candles!  It was a very nice party...

On Saturday, I just had a relaxed day.  The four of us - Rita, Mico, Pedro and me - had brunch together, and then Rita had to leave for the airport.  Before Pedro left for the airport as well, we spent some quality time with Mico and played tennis together.  After Pedro left, Miguel took good care of me.  We had dinner with some friends of mine in iHouse's dining hall and then watched a movie in Luisa's room.  It was a good relaxing day.  Everyone kept me so entertained that it was not as hard to be away from home as I thought it would be!