Bon anniversaire à moi

So today I turned 20! No longer a teenager, nope, nope, nope. I feel like I somehow now command more respect. (Just let me have my little fantasy, mmkay?)

I just got back in after going out with some of my friends in the group tonight. We went to a bar (American...yay!) in Vieux Lyon and hung out for a couple hours (it really cleared out after the football - soccer for all you American football lovers - match was over). I got a drink to celebrate (the drinking age here is 16), and I remembered two of the main reasons I don't generally drink: 1. I don't really like the taste of alcohol (the drink was rum, OJ, pineapple juice, and grenadine, and it would have been PERFECT without the rum), and 2. it's freaking expensive. That one drink (which was maybe 1 and 3/4 cups, tops) was 7 € ($9). Yikes. It's Coca-Cola for me from here on out.

Anyway, my whole day was very nice. My classmates sang happy birthday to me when I got to school this morning, and Marielle (our TA) gave me a really delicious brioche. When I got home this afternoon, Mareike, the super-nice German exchange student who is also living here now, gave me a magnet from Paris (she went this weekend) and a little note written on an art nouveau postcard (coincidentally, she picked my favorite art nouveau design of all time: Le Chat Noir.) It was sooooo nice of her. She also gave me a little chocolate pastry/cake and lit a candle on top for me. I blew it out and then promptly dropped the cake but proceeded to eat it anyway. It was delicious.

Other than that, it's been a pretty low-key day. Classes lasted forever, but we don't really have any tomorrow; we have a group "outing" to a museum, possibly followed by lunch. This doesn't start until 10:40, so I have a little time to sleep in (which is why we all went out tonight).

This weekend, I'm gonna stick around Lyon and hopefully spend some time visiting and relaxing in le Parc de la Tête d'Or, as well as maybe spending a night out in one of the bars-on-a-boat-on-the-river things that they've got going on over here (drinking Coke, natch. I'm not made of money). But for now, I'm going to bed. I was going to try to get a little work done, but it's 1:30 in the morning and it's my birthday (well, technically not anymore, but you know what I mean). Reading be darned.