Happy Birthday to me..!

Another birthday over, another year gained, and what a fun day it was! It didn't start all that fun, with class on Monday morning at 8:30, but a cup of tea with Lena in the university cafeteria did help, and then receiving a call from Mom and Thomas when I got home, and then from my boyfriend! And I opened up the gifts my family left behind here for me to open on the 8th! Thank you guys! I love my little Valencia toro!

As it was my birthday I decided that I deserved the day off from studying, so I took the metro to the city centre where the 'rebajas' have begun, which is Spanish for 'Hell of Shrieking Women', ups, I mean, 'Sale'. :-p I bought two sweaters and a lovely necklace for a good price, always a pleasure for an economist. ;-) Then I went back to go to my afternoon class, after which I called my boyfriend again to show him the catches of the day.

At 6:30pm I had invited some friends to have a 'merienda', which is an afternoon snack, at my favourite place, Café Soret. More people than I had expected showed up, given it's the time right before the exams, which was a real pleasure for me! We had so much fun that the merienda lasted until 10pm! (I also had so much fun that I completely forgot to take pictures even though I had taken my camera, for which I'm really sorry now because it would have been a great opportunity to show you my friends!) When I went to the counter to pay for the many pieces of delicious chocolate brownie and the many chocolate milks we had consumed, the waiter asked me what I had drunk and eaten. Then he invited me for my birthday, 'on the house'! What a great surprise! It's true that I go there so often that they must know my face by now, but this was a really lovely suprise!

Afterwards, I still went to a Chinese restaurant to have dinner with the girls, Eliana, Lena and Morgane. I wanted to go to a good pizzeria near my house, but it was closed. Darn, Monday evening. But the Chinese was good and we had a good time. When I came home around 11:30pm, I found José half asleep on the couch, watching tv, holding a big wrapped box on his lap. 'Guys!', he yelled, 'She's here!'. They remembered my birthday, those angels! And they gave me a big bottle of wine of denominación controlada from Segovia, Saul's town. (That's the wooden box you see on the picture). Wow! And we had some very tasty cake, a leftover from Reyes but not less festive for my birthday! Poor guys, I thought they had forgotten as they were all studying quietly in their rooms when I came home at 5... so I left them waiting here to surprise me until 11:30pm!

So all in all I had one of the best birthdays ever, when I had expected to be rather lonely today... It's the suprises that I love best, and I won't forget this day for a long while!

I will soon write about my family's and my aunt's visit to Valencia and post a bunch of pictures, so do no worry, all those of you who have requested it! But just not today, because my birthday ended one hours and 15 minutes ago and I should get to sleep...