My Birthday Abroad!

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I love seeing Senado Square at night.
            My birthday was on Wednesday, and one thing that I thought about pretty often before coming to Macau was how I would be spending it. More than that, I was always wondering what my life at that time would be like. "Past me" was thinking about my birthday as some sort of checkpoint in my time abroad; it's near the end of the semester, so will I be busy with work? Will I have a lot of friends? Would they want to travel somewhere with me
to celebrate? How will I feel, knowing that my flight back home is a couple weeks away?

            Well it's about that time now. In terms of work, I don't have much. Classes have ended, I just finished my last paper, and I only have two finals. The next couple of weeks is the examination period, so I'm planning on going Guangzhou and/or Hong Kong during the time. While I have so many good friends from the study abroad group and a few local friends, I'm afraid that I might have to travel alone again since everyone else seems to be far busier than me. And now that I only have a couple weeks left, I'm in overdrive trying to make sure I do everything I want to, and try to do it as much as possible. I'm trying to hang out with my friends as often as I can, eat all of the foods that I enjoy, take in the sights while I can, and hope it will be good enough to last me until I come back some day.
About to enter my first casino!
            Let's talk about my birthday instead! So on Tuesday night, the night before my birthday, some of the girls and I went to this bar in Macau. Tuesday nights are Ladies Nights at this bar, so we were planning on having some good fun! Most of the girls have been there before, but I haven't been able to so it was my first time. Unfortunately, Tuesday was also Labor Day, so Ladies Night was off, and the drinks are incredibly expensive compared to being free 😔. 
            But we had another idea, even if it sounds a little silly. We went to 7-Eleven, bought drinks from there, and stood outside a different popular bar in Taipa 😃. Now I know what you're thinking, because I thought the same thing when we did it for the first time earlier this semester. "Why go all the way to a bar just to sit outside of it and have convenience store drinks?" I still don't know. Atmosphere, I guess? Bar drinks are expensive and bars are also loud, so the nice sitting area outside with cheap drinks sounds like a great option. We talked a lot and had a nice night, so I'd say it was pretty successful!
Wynn Palace in Taipa
            On my actual birthday, now that I turned 21, I could enter Macau's biggest primary attraction for the first time: CASINOS. I managed to get one of my friends to come with me to Wynn Palace in Taipa where we took a cable car in and out of the brightly lit, massive building. Now I won't say that I was bad at gambling, but in all honesty I was pretty bad 😅. I didn't really worry too much over the money, I lost about $43, but it was my birthday and it was all in the name of having the experience. But I guess you could say I didn't really... "Wynn!" (*pause for groans about that terrible pun*) I did one round of roulette, and spent the rest of my time at slots, mainly because I didn't really know how to do anything and my friend wasn't too helpful. I suppose you could ask the employees how to play, but they didn't really speak a lot of English (surprise, surprise.) I'll try to go to a casino again before I leave, but I'll bring one of my more casino-savvy friends to help me out.
It's so cute!
            The next night (yes, the party continues!), our big friend group celebrated together again because in addition to my birthday the day before, Margarida (the girl I went to Bali with) had her birthday on May 4th, that Friday. A few friends made us a cake and we went out to the club as if we needed a reason to do so. A couple of my local friends even got me this tiny cake! All in all, the 3-day birthday celebration was more than I could ask for 😁.
            Ok, I'm going to have to study now. I actually have an exam tomorrow that I haven't started studying for, but it's multiple choice so I'm not too worried. I hope everyone has a good week, and I hope that by the time my next post comes out that I've had or am on a super fun trip somewhere so I can talk about it! Until then,

 再见！

 TL;DR: I've reached my birthday, which has always been a sort of checkpoint in my mind for my study abroad, I managed to celebrate quite a bit, and I even got to get my first experience in a casino!

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