One year as Australian : 18th Birthday

Monday the 15 of June 2015 was the day before my 18^th birthday. I couldn’t quite figure out whether it was a good or a bad thing that I would celebrate my 18^th on the other side of the globe, a long way from my friends and family at home. However I was sure about one thing - it was way too late to change the plans. Not that I was going to change them anyways, but the fact it was too late kind of made everything better.

After school Kelly and I went shopping and in the evening we cleaned the deck and prepared for my party. It was so nice to have a party to look forward to, even though my birthday was on a normal Tuesday.

16/06/2015

It was early morning when I woke up. This was the first time I had the honour of celebrating my birthday in the middle of winter, which I found quite funny. It was even more fun after having skyped my parents and realized the winter temperature in FNQ was higher than the summer temperature in Denmark.

I went and got a cup of tea with Jon and Kelly before they went to school. It was so weird that I had finally turned 18. When Kelly walked in with gifts and a card for me, I was sure that I was more than happy to celebrate my day on in Australia with my Australian family and friends. From Jon and Kelly I got a nice little purple bracelet. In the other gift there was a hard disk full of movies from Bethany. I hadn’t expected anything so gifts for me to unwrap in the morning was the best surprise I could get.

I enjoyed that I didn’t have to go to school and went for a morning run instead. Around 10 am Bethany came home from work and we drove into town to pick up Zoé from France, who is another exchange student who was coming up for my birthday. The three of us decorated the deck and prepared some of the cooking for the dinner. We had so much fun decorating and preparing and I was very happy to spend my day with the two of them.

Getting flowers from Grandma

More flowers

My private flower decorator

Ready for birthday dinner

#flowers #candles #music

Picking up my beautiful cake from Elspeth's

Lunch at lake Barine Teahouse

In the evening Ana, Steffi and Pauline arrived and my birthday couldn’t have been any better (However we missed the rest of the group). We had a very nice dinner and ate way too much food. Everyone around me helped me and made celebrating my birthday away from my family and friends seams like a paradise. Bethany thank you for taking the day of work to spend it with me, Zoé for helping me during the whole day, all the other exchanges students for traveling up from Cairns to celebrate the day with me, Grandma for giving me a crazy amount of flowers, Elspeth for making me the most beautiful cake I have ever seen, Jean and Michael for calling me and singing happy birthday and most of all Jon and Kelly for hosting a wonderful party for me. I am so thankful for everything and everyone who made an effort to make my day perfect.

Kelly and I preparing veggiesicks

Zoé and I

Happy birthday girl! :)

Pauline, I, Zoé, Steff, Georgia, Ana and Beth

After the dinner we had made a quiz for us to complete. The quiz was 18 questions of Aussie slang. I do live with schoolteachers, which means the tests got corrected and marked in the proper way with letters from E to A and even a plus or a minus.

When Bethany came out with the cake they were all singing happy birthday and before we got to taste the lovely cake I got a birthday song in Danish, German, Portuguese, French and English. The girls had bought me a Pandora bracelet with the Sydney Opera House with a small heart as a memory from when we kissed the Opera House. It was a beautiful gift and I think I will start collecting the charms from each country I will visit in future.