the magical number 23

So, on Monday I turned 23! Certain ages bring with them certain magical new abilities, like getting your license at 17 (in NJ), becoming a legal adult at 18, being able to legally buy and drink alcohol at 21, etc. With 23 comes the lovely event of being kicked off of my parent's insurance. Hooray for the privatization of health care! At the moment I'm flying uninsured, but soon enough I'll hopefully have my very own health care plan. (The contracts are in the mail or being processed, or something...)

Anyway, to celebrate my policylessness, today I threw myself a Do-It-Yourself birthday party! What does that mean exactly? It means people come over and we all make dinner and decorations together, then eat and enjoy them and each others' company. Afterwards we played picture telephone and flirted with the idea of playing our own version of Loaded Questions, but then people had to leave and we just sat and talked. It was really fun. I love all my friends,  it is true. Even those that couldn't make it because they were far away and thus not invited. You know.

Additionally, Matt wrote me an ode! For years and years I have been planting this idea in people's minds but people have just laughed at my heart-meant suggestion. But, happily, I can now say that at least one person has taken up my challenge and actually done it! The fabulous ode goes like this:

Cassandra, Cassandra, Queen of the day.

Invited us all to this delightful soiree.

With decorations and food, and lazy friends such as I

It must have been trying to put this together on the fly.

So if I, perchance, fail to honor her well

I can only expect her ire to swell.

So I speak these stanzas to celebrate her birth,

To stave off her anger, and fill the party with mirth.

Pretty cool, huh? Happy birthday to me!

cuenca canopy

Today we went on a field trip to the Cuenca Canopy! (That means zip lining!)

This is me before the journey. I am ready to conquer any zip line that crosses my path! (There ended up being 6!)

I remembered Duck Face. I win.

This is me on one of the shorter zip lines. Note that it looks as if I am wearing white, knee-high socks. Do not be deceived, those are just my legs.

After it was all said and done. Note the muddy pants: some people maybe slipped a little on the short trails connecting the zip lines. It is not their fault: it was raining heavily making the trails almost impossible to climb at some points. Emily was towed up the mountain at the very end by three of our guides and Roddy and almost didn't make it because she was laughing so hard.

The whole group. We are quite triumphant. Note that everyone else is wearing blue or brown or another darker color. I am in red. No big deal.

Our main guide/owner of the Cuenca Canopy. Quite a man.

guayaquil

Today we went to Guayaquil. It was a day filled with lots of sun, temple grounds, a lady stalker, flora and fauna, an unsolicited phone number, hijos solteros, skin advice from a stranger, crying from laughing so hard, delicious meat, oreo chocolate ice cream, important bathroom signage, river strolls, truck honking, live iguanas, screaming, giggling, 444 stairs, wind, 3 ducks, founding fathers, pirates, and an anchor.

It was a busy day.

brooklyn!

On Saturday, June 13th at exactly 12:14 pm MST I received a text message that reads as follows:

From: Tess Nelson

Hey, are you in utah? Cuz i am.

I was so excited that I immediately texted her back to find out if she would be in Provo while she was here and finding out that she, her mom Janet, and her sister Emily would be in Provo that night I called them to invite them over for dinner and when they asked if one or all of them could also spend the night I said, "Of course! Yes! All of you!!!" in complete disregard of the fact that we don't really have enough sleeping facilities for everyone who would be staying; I knew that it would all work out and it did. While we have 3 couches in our living room (enough for the 3 visiting Nelsonians) one of them was presently being occupied by Stephanie who was visiting for the week from Nevada because it has been raining a ton there so they have to wait until next week to cut the alfalfa so it won't mold. Normal things. She, like I do, knows the Nelsons from when we all lived in Brooklyn when we were just jellybeans. (Janet told me that she and my mom have been friends now for 25 years. That is a quarter of a century for those of you who like fractions.) I called Stephanie to tell her the good news and her response was, "Cool." In Stephanie language this really means, "What?!? Awesome!!! I haven't seen the Nelsons in like 5 years and I just love them!!!" She was really almost as excited as I was.

I had been walking home from my friend Aleisha's apartment when I got the text so as soon as I got home Stephanie and I planned dinner (BBQ chicken with smashed potatoes, salad, fruit salad and chocolate zucchini cake for dessert), made a shopping list and went to the grocery store to purchase the necessary food items. All the while I kept turning to Stephanie with a big smile on my face and saying, "I am so excited!"

So, why was I so excited that three of my friends (four, if you count Stephanie) dropped by almost unannounced for food and shelter my last weekend in Provo, just days before finals when I had about a billion other things I should have been doing instead of entertaining them? Well, because I love them. I love everything about them. I love that every time I see Emily her hair is a different color (earning her the nickname "Hair" in high school) and that Tess always has a different purse that she has made herself that is awesome and that I can talk to Janet late into the night about anything and everything. And I love that they proved my linguistics professor right when he taught us that women speak slower than men but that women from New York speak faster than men from Texas (as illustrated when Nate White—from Texas—came over and occasionally interjected into our speedy after dinner banter) and that even though I haven't seen them in months we are so comfortable around each other that we pick up right where we left off and everything is the best.

Also, I love that we can illustrate AT&T's motto of "More bars in more places."