Birthday Shenanigans Pt 1

This weekend has been fantastic. Today will be spent studying in order to make up for it, but I have to do something fun for my birthday, right?

So first, on Friday night, was the reunion dinner for our Japan trip. We went to Koi, a Japanese Teppenyaki restaurant, and had delicious delicious food. Definitely not as good as in Japan, but good anyway. :P

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Anik and I got dressed all fancy.
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After dinner, I headed off to George Street to meet Andrew and a few of his friends for a ceilidh. If you don't know, a ceilidh is sort of like American square dancing, only with men in kilts, and it's a lot cooler. :P We had a lot of fun dancing and being spun about on the dance floor. The dances are quite cool, with everyone sort of dancing with everyone else, and so the dance is full of motion and aside from your partner(s), you rarely dance with the same couple again.

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Unfortunately I couldn't get any pictures of us dancing, but here is a picture of Andrew and I, looking all spiffy. :P
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Saturday, I made 2 pumpkin pies, and went shopping for party supplies like chips and dip, drinks, and cleaning supplies. At 5pm we headed out to meet a bunch of my friends at Fountain Park, which is an entertainment centre in Edinburgh with bowling, an arcade, and lots of other stuff.

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Playing Mario Kart while waiting for our bowling time
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Ahh, the memories of my childhood birthday parties are coming back to me now :P
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Kirsten, Kyle and Me!
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After bowling, we headed off to Pizza Express for some delicious pizza dinner! Despite the name, it's actually quite a nice restaurant. My friends very kindly paid for my dinner, and then we headed back to my house for some drinks, some pie, and some fun.

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Andrew bought THE cutest birthday cake I have ever seen.
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Closeup of the awesome birthday cake.

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Opening presents!
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Andrew commissioned the cutest birthday cake for me, which was so sweet (literally and figuratively), and then surprised me with some presents that made the night! He got me the Wii Mario Kart game, which he had one of his friends get on her trip to America (only American games work on American Wiis), and a giant pack of batteries (because he knows me well enough to know that when I plan a 'Wii night' party, I will undoubtedly forget the batteries, hahaha!). So we all played Mario Kart for a few hours while eating cake and pie, and it was a lot of fun. Anik got me a couple presents as well, which were things I'd actually needed like index cards and whiteboard markers (I know, we're dorks!), and also a cute little Hello Kitty Beanie Baby. My friends rock!

To end the night, I broke open a pack of indoor sparklers that Andrew's parents got me (along with a present which I can't open till Monday!), so we lit a few and enjoyed the sparkling!

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I heart my friends :)
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All in all, I think this might be the best birthday party I've ever had. I had so much fun, and got to have an awesome night with my friends :) I say this was Part 1 because Andrew is taking me out to dinner on Monday night. I feel extremely lucky this weekend to have such good friends and such an awesome boyfriend :)

Anyway, now it is time to get back to studying, gotta make up for the fun with some hard work now. So I am off to a cafe to get away from the internet. Ta ta!

Orienteering!

Hey, Folks!

So this last week has been largely uneventful. Mostly just studying and more studying.

The one fun thing I did do was go with Andrew to an orienteering event. Andrew is an avid orienteer(er?), and I'd gone to events before and just hung out in the car studying while he and his parents went out running, but this last Saturday was an event that was in a fairly straightforward area, so I decided to try it!

So, in case you don't know what orienteering is, and you don't feel like clicking the link above, it's basically a navigation race. You are handed a map at the start, with red circles representing each control, which you have to hit in a certain order, either using an electronic reader or, in this case, a card that you punch with each control's unique hole punch.

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The map! The little table on the left represents each control, and what it looks like. For example: control 1 is a path bend, 2 is the east side of a tree stump, 3 is the west side of a tree stump, etc. On the map itself, the line is the 'as the crow flies' route, which you may or may not be able to do depending on what's in your way!
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Andrew followed me making sure I knew what I was doing, and helping me figure out what everything on the map meant. I didn't need TOO much help though, so I mostly just enjoyed his company :P
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Trying to find the next control
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It's quite an interesting concept, and I enjoyed it a lot, even though I wasn't really doing it in a competitive fashion, and was just walking it instead of running. The only downside was that something got stuck in my contact about 2/3 of the way through, and I couldn't get it out, so had to just throw the contact away, and do the rest semi-blind. Still managed it though, and got a fairly decent time (49:20 and 16th out of 30).

Anyway, next Monday is my birthday, so the Saturday before I'm going to be going bowling with my friends, which should be fun. Not sure I want to be another year older, but I'm still excited anyway. :)