Week 18 - Jo's Birthday

---

26/5/2012

Today, I met up with Chris, Vikki, and Jeremy who’d come all the way from Germany to come hang out with Chris, so we all met up and had a big kiwi meet-up. We went bar-hopping, and wound up heading out to a club where I was going to meet up with Joanna, who’s birthday it was on Saturday. So we turned up at ‘ixo’, and the bouncer let in the girls that were with us, but not us. When we asked why, it was because we weren’t 21. He was saying this knowing danm well a group of 17 year old girls just minced on before this. But that was his JOB. He could let in any girls around 17-18, but guys HAD to have proof of being 21 or older. Creepy ? yeah kinda. But because I couldn’t make it in, I went back and chilled at the house with Alden and the host fam, until the others rolled in around 4 or 5am, and we all crashed in one big room.

27/5/2012

With a nice cruisy start to the day today, we all got up around 11, and proceeded to get in the pool and have a few cold ones. Today was amazing – 28 degrees Celsius, and not a cloud in the sky. This never happens in Belgium. So most of the day was then spent around the pool, chilling out and soaking up the rare sun. That night we all had a massive barbeque dinner, and then sat and had birthday drinks of champaign and pecket, lime cello and violet. Jo’s host dad was really into his music, and a lot of the time today was spent between myself and him having turns at setting up a 5 song set on the computer. He has a cool set-up in his house where all the rooms have speakers connected to an amp, which is connected to the computer. This meant that that every room in the house was jamming to ‘Rock Me Baby’ at one, and definitely something I want in my future house. Then, with the fact that tomorrow was a ‘conge’, which is some sort of catholic holiday that no-one works on or does anything on, we decided to stay another night, and with an old nylon-strung guitar that the host dad used to play, we jammed and laughed away the rest of the night, probably to the dismay of the neighbours.

28/5/2012

Another beautiful breakfast, coffee and sky was served up today, all the more reason to do nothing productive, but enjoy being young, free, and in a foreign country with friends from all corners of the world. When we all started to part, Rohan, Alden and myself went to chill at Guillemins, and to meet Alden’s sisters Claire and (kinda forgot her name), and we just waited for our trains to come around and take us back home.

---