Quickly, to the fellow student that contacted me on the insomnia post, I posted an answer under yours, so I hope that helps.
Continuing... it's been a couple weeks of birthdays here. We celebrated Ashley's for lunch at Coyaba, did Jay's 24 hour birthday bender, consisting of him jumping onstage (after invitation) with the band at Prickly Bay resort and rocking his trombone (no, seriously; he has a trombone; that's not a euphemism for anything) after lunch at La Bo, the surge party at the Victory Bar which we absolutely did NOT have to carry him home from, and so it goes.
For my birthday, let me tell you what my ideal birthday was: I wanted my parents to email me, some nice birthday emails from my friends from afar, a pleasant dinner at Aquarium with my friends here, House night, and then dive the next day.
Simple. Basic. Happy.
My birthday bitchslapped my expectations and I have awesome friends, parents, boyfriend, and cooperative marine life.
All sorts of emailed well wishes, which I greatly appreciate to you guys out there, and thank you. Got a birthday card from my mom via snail mail. Went to small group, which went well, and still was happy, but didn't really feel like it was my birthday, and that was fine.
Met up to head out to Aquarium with Nina, Ashley, David, and Jay. It's a pretty restaurant with good food that I've forgiven for contributing to my persistently troubling ankle sprain I sustained first term. Everyone was wonderful, we had a great meal, and Ashley whipped out the brownies she'd baked herself and stuck in the candles as everyone sang happy birthday.
AWWWWWWWW.
Dave had apparently been in cohorts with my mom, she'd sent him a bunch of presents for me, that he'd finished wrapping (they had to be partially open because of customs), so I could have wrapped presents on my birthday which he whipped out and presented to me at dinner.
AWWWWWWWW.
Then Dave pulled out his present to me. At first, I pretty much saw an SGU bear in surgical top and mask (it was commented that he can't be a real SGU student because he's not wearing a scrub top with shorts and flip flops, like most people in gross lab) that they sell at the bookstore that I'd said I thought was really cute and thought about getting, so I was thrilled he'd remembered that...
Until I realized that strapped to its chest; however, was an American Airlines ticket envelope containing a US dollar, 5 EC, 5 Euro, and 10 tien gulden (Netherlands Antilles). He said something to the effect of him knowing how much I like seeing new countries and getting my passport stamped (I'm a dork), so over Easter, we were gonna do four countries in four days: the US (Puerto Rico), St. Marten (Netherlands), Sint Maarten (France), and Anguilla.
So essentially, my jaw was hanging open for the rest of the meal, the check for which he picked up. Whoa.
And Jay piped up with throwing in the departure tax, since he's apparently known about this and is just that awesome (along with Nina, who's gonna teach me how to make foccacia because I'm addicted to it) at keeping secrets.
THEN it was back to my apartment for House night, which we arrived just in time for.
Woke up the next morning, still encompassed by the awesomeness of my friends and family, to go diving.
Dived the Bianca C, which I've wanted to dive since... well, before I came to the island the first time, and five minutes into the dive, the divemaster pointed up to indicate there was a giant spotted eagle ray above us. We moved toward the forward mast of the ship, which was fairly thick with barracuda, as shown:
This wreck is many degrees of awesome in and of itself, by the way, and it was also my deepest dive at max depth of 125 feet, and to scuba divers out there, yes, I did feel pretty narced. I'm apparently a cheap date.
Second dive was beautiful and involved spending half of it chasing the first sea turtle I've seen since coming to Grenada, which came close enough to me that I could touch its shell.
All in all, a birthday that was supposed to be a "I hope this day is actually less suckful than the usual day to day activity of being under constant stress" became seventeen different varieties of awesome. Thank you to all!
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