Happy Birthday!

Today was Lindsey's birthday. Her 21st birthday. It was also Saint Patrick's Day. As she likes to say she "turned 21 in country where it neither matters that it's Saint Patrick's Day nor that she was turning 21." We celebrated anyway. Here's some pictures.

Saturday Night:

All 17 of us met at Taco Box, a Mexican chain popular in Argentina.

Cat, Cat's host sister, and I made her a cheese cake. This was more challenging here than it would have been at home, because not all of the typical ingredients were readily available. But it turned out well. We also bought raspberry preserves and chocolate sauce to put on top.

You can't see it here, but her free shot was on fire. There were beautiful blue flames.

After a bit of encouragement and some how-to tips, it was gone. 

We then made our way to an Irish Pub. It was, after all, Saint Patrick's day. Here she's listening to the bag pipes and other music coming from inside.

And then they came outside.

And then they came to our table and played Happy Birthday.

Sunday Morning: 

My gift: An American style breakfast.
No one here would dream of eating eggs for breakfast, so this meal is something Lindsey has been missing during her year abroad.
Yes, that is bacon. No, I did not eat any. Yes, I did cook it.

We relaxed a little after breakfast and then went to her host brother's house for a huge lunch with his family. It was a lot of fun. We spent a long time talking about little things that are very different in our two countries. These are the things that you kind of assume are true most places, because that's just how life works. It's all you've ever known. For example, they have and carry with them at all times a national document of identity. And they need it to buy anything with a credit card and in many other situations. Yes, we have our driver's licenses, but they're really not the same nor do we use them with the same frequency. In our experiences here, the best example of this is the way that the university works. Schedules aren't set until a week before classes start and it's not the same schedule across the university.  At home, you know on what date classes will start and stop and on which days and at what hours classes will meet months in advance. That's how universities operate. In actually, that is just our system. Other places do it differently.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Lindsey! And Torie! I thought about you a lot today, too, I hope your day was all you hoped for.