Birthday Anticipation!!

So today in the mail I received my birthday/Easter package from home. Hooray! :) It came complete with plenty of sweet and five - that's right, five!! - bottles of Dr. Pepper. Hahaha! Mom, I told you that they have them here, didn't I? Either way, it was very thoughtful. Thank you!!!

Also in the package was a HUGE bag of peanut butter m&ms from a gal at my church in Evansville. Thanks so much, Brenda!! And yes, I am saving them for our next meeting of the Nest! You are so great! :D

Today I slept in until 11 am - hallelujah. It was very nice. I don't plan on being so lazy my entire break, but it was nice to be able to do that without feeling guilty for having skipped class. Haha. I didn't get out of bed until almost 2 because I was listening to music and knitting. Sigh. What a great morning!

Rosie and I went to get our hair cut this afternoon. We both desperately needed to get that done. My hair actually curls again. It's great! :)

Hm, backtracking a little, Friday night was Laurent's last night in Belfast, so we hung out with him a bit and gave him plenty of big hugs before he went home. Saturday I ran into a very sick Nicolas on his way to buy some bottles of water. I convinced him to come over and watch Mary Poppins with the rest of the Nesters that were still here. It took a lot of work, but I did succeed. He was worried about getting all of us sick, but I told him that if need be, we could simply quarantine him inside one of the duvets from the nest. We didn't end up needing to do that.

Sunday morning-ish, we went out to brunch as a send-off for Nicolas, who was leaving that afternoon. Our gang consisted of Rosie, me, Jeniffer, Nicolas, and Siqi. We went to this little diner of a place called Maggie May's. It reminded me a lot of the Country Kitchen in Williamston. Or is it the Old Country Kitchen? I can't remember. Anywho, it was really yummy and amazingly priced. I mean, I had a pancake and a couple pieces of toast for 1 pound, 70 pence. (I would have just written it as 1.70, but then I realized I didn't have the pound symbol on my keyboard. Just in case you were wondering...)

After we dropped Nicolas off at his bus (because he had to bus down to Dublin, where he would then fly to Brussels), Rosie and Jen and I walked around downtown a bit and shopped. We went into the wee book store (yes, I said wee. Like my cultural infusion there? ;)) They had a huge stack of books in the back that were just 99p each, so Rosie and I each bought several. I now have add Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights (which Rosie actually bought me for my birthday), Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Anne of Green Gables to my literary collection here. I'm not sure which one(s) I will take with me to travel next week, but for sure I am bringing something.

Last night Siqi, Jen, and I went to Fisherwick church. Siqi and I went last week with Sydney, but she was gone this weekend on an Irish tour around Galway and other parts of the West coast. Anywho, it was a good time. We saw our friend Chris there - the guy we met on the Carrickfergus Castle trip. :)

Melissa is gone to Japan all week visiting a friend. I miss her. :( But, we do have a new German roommate upstairs. His name is Hannes. Did I already mention him? Well, he's cool. He and I went to the market on Saturday and got some scones. His birthday is the day after mine this week, so Wednesday evening we will celebrate me and then at midnight it'll be his turn. It should be good "craic" (another term they use here; it means "fun").

I received an email from my parents about how they found a time capsule at our church. They had a work day this past Saturday. That's when they discovered it. My dad sent me a link of his interview on the news. I guess they opened it in church on Sunday and found an old book. It was too moldy at the time to be able to tell what it was, but they hope it will dry out well enough to produce some sort of explanation of itself. How cool is that!
Here is the link for the news:

http://www.14wfie.com/global/category.asp?c=151146&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=15032&topVideoCatNoB=135100&topVideoCatNoC=72953&topVideoCatNoD=129537&topVideoCatNoE=126152&autoStart=true&clipId=3623055&topVideoCatNo=undefined&autoStart=true&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv

Alrighty, welp, I guess I'll be on me way nigh. That was pirate-speak mixed with a Northern Irish accent mixed with something else I'm not even sure of. But yes. I will go now. Happy Monday, everyone! :)