Birthday Weekend

Ok well where to start! I guess Friday night would seem a little too obvious.
Well we got a little group together and headed off down 6th street to a place called Aces Lounge which lets in under 21s even if they do embarrass you by using a big black pen to put crosses on both of your hands! Its really hard to describe just how bad this place really was. The music was all really old hip-hop like the original Justin Timberlake songs from when I was still in year 9 and secondly nobody was dancing when we arrived. There were a lot of people on the dancefloor very surreptitiously shifting their weight about a bit but nobody actually dancing so when me and Veema got onto the dance floor we put a stop to all of that and got quite a few strange looks - apparently a little confidence is very shocking in Austin!

That was how it started anyway. It was quite helpful that we'd gone with a group of guys because we could dance without being harrassed so long as they were around but as for the rest of the people there, well lets put it this way, after about an hour literally everybody except us and the guys we were with had paired off with people they didn't know and lets just leave it at that. There was just nowhere safe to look! Apparently thats pretty usual for any club in the US so we've concluded that we're not especially big fans of their club scene!

Saturday was our first touristy day out really, we went to the State Capital and took plenty of pictures but haven't yet made it to the UT tower because it's only open certain days of the week. After we'd nearly run out of battery on our cameras we took a wander into town and happened to walk past a classic cinema. I think my eyes literally popped out when I saw what was showing and me and Veema literally started jumping up and down with excitement - The Godfather was showing on Saturday night! It was literally amazing and Marlon Brando was born for the big screen. The theatre itself was fantastic, i think it was an old opera house - really elaborately decorated. I tried to get some pictures without the flash but I think they've come out pretty blurry, there are however some lovely ones of the women's toilets which could just have easily been a woman's dressing-room. Although the film was obviously 3 hours long (which they played without an interval!) it wasn't even 11 when we got back to our dorm room. We therefore decided that we couldn't possible end a Saturday night like that so we got in touch with a friend called Jeddy who we'd met the week before to see what he was up to. He had plans to go to a party at about 12 and invited us along.

The party didn't exactly last very long because a fight broke out which tends to happen quite frequently apparently but we met a friend of his called Shiraz and all went back to his apartment for some Shisha afterwards. We also went out onto the roof of his building to look out over the city which was beautiful. It was literally almost dawn when we got home but at least the next day was Sunday and it didn't especially matter if we slept through most of it :)

We had also discovered an amazing coincidence though - that me and Jeddy would both be turning 20 on the 20th. He suggested we go out for a big meal on Sunday and organised it all. About 14 of us went to this all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse (poor Veema doesn't eat beef but thankfully they also served other meat!) which gave amazing to-the-table service with as much meat and salad as you could possibly imagine. It was an added bonus that Shiraz drove us top-down in his BMW convertible - although he had been worried we'd mess up our hair when he hit 100mph!! What a buzz!

Us two birthday people also got complimentary deserts (I had keylime pie!) which they put candles in and decorated them with Happy Birthday written in syrup! After the meal we headed out to a karaoke bar - it wasn't anything like I expected though. You rent a room for your friends and don't have to sing in front of strangers so despite our protests me and Veema did end up singing nearly every song :)

Yesterday was our actual birthday and though Jeddy went back to Houston to see his family for a couple of days Shiraz took us salsa dancing. Now I've never salsa danced before so we went early and he taught me a couple of steps before the class started which was completely free by the way - just a class for people to show up and dance on the university campus. I swear I looked like a pro by the end (well alright not quite but I was doing better than a lot of people who'd been for several weeks!) and so Shiraz is going to take us to a salsa club on Friday that under 21s can go to and show off all their newly learned skills - really can't wait! Am definitely thinking about salsa dancing when I get back to Warwick although apparently guys at Warwick haven't quite got the memo yet - here there were more guys than girls at the class because they've realised here that dancing is a good way to meet girls, UK men clearly haven't noticed this yet!

Anyway clearly I had a really great birthday that I've been told is set to carry on well into the next couple of weeks. It was really sweet at work yesterday as well actually - Kelly gave me some really beautiful flowers and surprised me with a card signed by everyone in the office and a birthday cake with my name on which was lit with candles and everyone came to sing to me. Veema acted as a very convincing decoy when they had to sneak the cake past my desk at one point!

Its really amazing here, everyone seems like they genuinely care and are making every effort to make sure we don't have a moment to get bored. Even this guy in our dorm brought his little kitten round so we could play with it and later gave us a personalised tour of their campus after we dragged him along to salsa - he's definitely not allowed a cat in the dorm but nobody really notices very much around here... or anything in fact!

Anyway, that was a stupidly long blog - sorry! but theres so much going on I want to write it down before I forget a single thing!
Love to you all
Em xxxx