A Birthday Down Under

For my 24th birthday I headed to Panama with my sister to learn how to surf, for my 25th birthday I bought a ticket to Australia for a one-year working-holiday, and for my 26th birthday I went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef!  Maybe I should head to Switzerland next year and learn how to ski or something...

It was a really nice birthday, and I can't thank everyone enough for making it special.  Louis had bought me a cheesecake and we celebrated at 12:05am and he even got me some small gifts.

Raspberry Cheesecake - we had trouble keeping
the candles lit because it was so windy....

 My phone's vibrations woke me up at 6:30am with a birthday text from someone I don't know.  I still don't know who sent the text, it was an Australian number and was signed "Best Wishes, Nana", but I don't know anyone named Nana.  I eventually rolled out of bed, I had to teach at Nova so I couldn't sleep in anyway.  My awesome cousin included several birthday cards in her package of "25 Days of Christmas Greetings" so I had plenty of cards to open.  My mom sent a box full of cookies and things a few weeks ago, so I was able to enjoy some of the Nutella (yes, it is a minor miracle that I still have some left). After teaching Chiho in the morning I headed to the library to catch up on emails and blogging.   Alicia called me on my way home from the library and said she wanted to take me out to dinner, so we got to catch up over some delicious Korean food.  Agatha was in Sydney and she didn't want to eat dinner alone, so it worked out perfectly. She had to go home earlier than anticipated, but that was fine, I just headed to volleyball!!  When I checked my phone on the way home from volleyball Emma had texted telling me to stop by on my way home.  She not only had a card for me, she had made me tiramisu!!!

 Other than the birthday cards I received, the events (and gifts) of the day were a surprise, and pleasant ones at that. God has definitely blessed me with some really awesome friends here in Australia.

Yesterday (Friday), I did a famil tour with Quicksilver to the Agincourt Reef (a ribbon reef that runs parallel to the Continental Shelf).  This one was a real famil tour, in the sense that we had two of the sales reps with us all day showing us around and explaining things.  The cruise actually departed from Port Douglas so I drove up with Nat, the Quicksilver agent, and it's such a lovely drive up there.  There were 6 of us total, 4 agents and 2 sales reps and we all got along great and had an awesome day.  It was a lot of fun and I got to finally go scuba diving (third time's the charm, right?)!!!  My ears are still popping a bit today, but I managed to make it the whole way down and it was such a relief to finally be able to cross that off my list.  It was really cool, and a nice birthday gift (even though they didn't know it).   On the semi-sub tour we got to see a reef shark, so now I just need to see a sea turtle!  Well, I just got a text asking me to work tonight, so it looks like it will be a busy weekend!!