The teenage years are over! I have turned 20 some 8 hours earlier than I would normally have and enjoyed every minute of the day here in Australia.

I was already told by my three lovely flatmates, Loïs, Ana and Victoria, that I was not allowed to get out of bed before they told me to, so I stayed in bed waiting for them to 'wake me up'. When they eventually did, I was greeted with an amazing pancake breakfast and gifts that are both very cute and very useful! An awesome start of the day!

In the afternoon, I experienced something completely new to me: I had to go to class on my birthday...! The first and probably also the last opportunity for me to really experience how it is to treat your fellow classmates in school. As my birthday is always in the midst of summer, in primary school my 'uitdeeldag' (treatday) would be weeks before my actual birthday, so this was the perfect moment to give myself the actual experience. Coincidentally, the Aldi that is located in our apartment building had Dutch food week and sold stroopwafels (together with some random other stuff like Wilhelmina peppermint, red cabbage, Honig, and krakelingen) and thus I brought stroopwafels to my tutorial. Not only was it much fun to hand out the stroopwafels and get birthday wishes and songs, but it also provided a good opportunity afterwards for some conversation with my fellow Australian classmates!

Immediately after class I went out for dinner with Ana and Victoria, and I had another first experience: dumplings. Though I have eaten quite a lot of Chinese food, somehow I had never tried dumplings before, but I must admit that I missed something in the first 20 years of my life. They are DELICIOUS! It was around that time as well that Holland woke up and messages started pouring in, which was so much fun to read! We headed back, watched an amazing episode of Game of Thrones (no, we could not skip that) before friends arrived for a fun night in our apartment with donuts, cake and wine. It I am very thankful for all the effort (Loïs, Victoria and Ana, you guys are the best version of crazy) and birthday wishes: it was a great day!