Birthday Number One

Strangely enough, I have two birthdays this year. I was born around 6 p.m. on December 17th, but at that time it was already December 18th in France. So I suppose I can celebrate tomorrow too!

Since I didn't have any classes, I just enjoyed a relaxing day of sleeping in, watching movies, and procrastinating. I never did get around to studying for my Dutch exam, but I didn't do too badly. I know what the mistakes I made were, but I wouldn't have been able to prevent them by studying. They were things I hadn't learned thoroughly enough.

After the exam I met a bunch of friends at the movie theater. I also brought along Sara, who's a German student from another university in my Dutch class. We saw the Golden Compass, which wasn't inspiring. If I hadn't read a lot of warning articles about it before hand, I wouldn't have thought that it was particularly anti-religious. There's a definite anti-government theme to the movie, but I wouldn't read into it more than that. The main problems, however, were with the rhythm of the plot. It didn't seem to me to be structured very well, and I didn't find any of the characters too interesting. Probably would have helped if I had read the book, but seeing the movie didn't give me any desire to. I would definitely not recommend this movie to the under-ten crowd, since it had a lot of violence. Afterwards we went to McDonald's (the only place open) for ice cream and chatting until the bus came.

Overall it was a great day! I don't feel any different though, now that I'm 21.