So you say it's your birthday

Sup everybody. I am now 23 years old. I know, it's awesome. Being 23 is kind of meaningless except that I feel like I need to be a real person now, with a real job, etc. It's a lot of pressure, but as long as I have a blog, I can't take myself too seriously and that takes a little bit of the burden away.

There's so much to talk about guys, I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start with birthday-related things. First off, we went out to Villars (ski resort just up the mountain from Huemoz) last night to celebrate my birthday and to have one last night out with a bunch of people that were leaving today. It was a ton of fun. There were about 20 of us there and we didn't talk about theology or philosophy once. It was very relaxing. The best part was that I didn't have to pay for any of my drinks, not so much because I was the birthday boy but because people owed me money. Either way, I drank for free. The beer here is pretty limited and light. They have this beer called Carlsberg which is like Budweiser sort of. It's not very good. But, a girl here named Steffi bought me one of the most amazing shots I've ever tasted (okay, it's only like the third shot I've ever had....I'm normally just a beer guy). It was Vodka, Cointreu, and peppermint licquor and it was like drinking heaven. If it wasn't so potent I would have drank (drunk, dranken?) 30 more.
In other birthday-related news, I got a package today from Mr. Patrick McQuinn. Inside said package was a nice bottle of Lemon Fanta. To understand why this gift was so amazing, you have to understand that ever since I got back from Italy my junior year in high school, I've been telling people (or at least Pat) about how great Fanta Lemon is and what a ripoff it is that you can't get it anywhere that I've ever seen except for Italy. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. Somehow, though, Pat found it and sent me a bottle of it. I haven't drank (drunk, dranken, drunken?) it yet, but I plan on enjoying every sip. Also, my roommate Jeff wrote me a nice poem today to celebrate my birthday. In so doing, he unknowingly kept alive the two-year-old (as of this year) tradition of people writing me poems for my birthday. So, that was nice.

Now, about non-birthday-related things. A bunch of us went down to Ollon (about 10 minutes down the mountain) on Saturday night to the annual Festival of Bread and Wine. It was great. Ollon is a wine-growing area and so every year (maybe twice a year) they have this big festival to eat bread and drink wine. So, we went down and ate bread and drank wine. Lot's of wine, for next to nothing. And it was amazing wine. I'll put some pictures below.
Also, we had a talent show last night. For the most part it was incredibly talented people doing stupid things. There's a guy here that has a Native American flute and can play it like a madman, so he did an improv with another guy playing the piano. A guy named Micah can beatbox like somebody from a crazy video on YouTube and he did that while another guy who can freestyle really well freestyled about random people at L'Abri whose names we would call out. I sang harmony on a couple of goofy songs written by one of the helpers here, Josh. Combined with going out later on that night, it was probably the best night I've had here so far.

Now, I realize that the pictures I put on the blog probably take awhile to load. At least they do on the computer here. At first I didn't think there was anything I could do about it, but now I've just found an online image resizer, so the images below are resized to hopefully not take forever and ever and ever to load. I'll fix the other ones when I get home in a week, and I'll also post all my pictures somewhere online. Until then, here's a few:



Here's a picture of the traditional Swiss band and dancers at the Festival of Bread and Wine in Ollon. They really weren't very good. If you're going to do a really simple dance and wear a costume, then you should at least be completely synchronized.





This is Jo, Jeff, and Vicki. Jo is from South Africa originally but now lives in Australia. Jeff is from San Luis Obispo but now lives in Charlotte. Vicki is from Manchester, England. Just a word about Vicki. She went to Oxford and studied theology and is probably the smartest student here. She knows everything about everything. It makes me wish we did school in America like they do in Europe.




Here's a shot of the dining room from an adjacent lounge area. I know, you don't really get an idea of what the dining room actually looks like, but I really like this picture, so you'll have to deal with it until a put up all the pictures when I get back.






Finally, here's a shot of the moon over the mountains that my balcony overlooks. I thought it looked awesome. So should you.