Another week has passed here in the lovely New Jersey, and the adventures of Iek, Leonardo and myself have been replenished. After all the hard work and celebrating we did this week, we have taken the liberty to treat our self to a little shopping spree..

Friday was the most important day of the week. Yours truly got to celebrate her 21st birthday, and as you all know, here in the big US of A is 21 a big step! You are considered an adult, get to drink alcohol and other stuff like that. Anyway, when I arrived at the breakfast table, the whole kitchen was decorated, and the typical birthday song was playing. Laurens had made up a little presentation, and I received the Birthday ribbon and crown. Then came the highlight of the day: I got to open my presents! I didn’t really expect any, but my host family had found to time to wrap something up for me : A beautiful photo album to put all my pictures in, and what do you know : a box of Mary Chocolates (I can’t see or smell them anymore). Elke and Laurens also decorated the door of the bedroom, the bathroom, and my workspace. Unfortunately, i didn’t get the day off..

The biggest surprise though was the airmail I received at noon : a special delivery from Melle, containing another birthday card, and very precious Côte d’Or chocolate. Things like that are worth gold here in the States.

Martina got me the last surprise of the day : an excellent dinner (accompanied by the 3 little monsters), a nice glass of bubbles (my first legal alcohol), and a large brownie cake (it took us less than 15 minutes to eat the whole thing).. It was a splendid evening, if I may say so myself. We played some games, talked some more..

Saturday was the second most important day of the week, because then, we got to celebrate Elke’s 23th birthday! And what better way to celebrate than to go shopping? Because of the fact that we still don’t have a car, Martina was kind enough to play private chauffeur. First we went to shop at the Rockaway Mall. It was really surprising, because Martina said it was a small mall. In my eyes it was rather huge! They even had a H&M! For a moment I thought I was in Europe again. The first store we had to visit was Abercrombie (Laurens has like a sixth sense to trace these stores) the first one we landed in was the kids store. When Laurens asked for his sizes, the lady looked at him kind of strange, and almost didn’t dare to say that he had to go to the other store. After this little misunderstanding we finally got to the store we were looking for, and found our new favorite clothes. Elke and I (the birthday girls) felt like real celebrities, so we bought us a pair of oversized glasses. After the rockaway mall, we left for Woodbury Common Premium Outlet. This looks like a little village, with all outlet stores of all famous designers from Europe and America. Unfortunately for me, most XS sizes here are comparable to an M in Belgium, so it was rather hard to find something nice. Martina, Elke and Laurens on the other hand found some really good things!

After like 7 hours of shopping, we headed home with our handsome take. Because it was still Elke’s birthday, we decided to uncork another bottle of bubbles, which Willemijn spilled very kindly all over my laptop. Lucky for me (or should I say for her?) : half a kitchen roll and a bit of hair dryer later, everything worked fine again. The only bad thing is that it still smells like champagne!

Sunday was Lazy day. We got up shamelessly late, did nothing important at all, visited some more shops, rented some videos in the library, started planning our trip to Washington DC and mailed the home front..