Firstly, super huge thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes, nice messages, and surprises. 27 sure kicked off with a bang! Here's a run down of my birthday.

When I got to campus I was greeted with the awesome surprise of my office decked out with streamers, balloons, and my own birthday boy badge. So much fun! I was also treated to an awesome lunch with the crew at La Trobe who even had cake for me and sang happy birthday. Little things like that make birthdays far from home super special.

For the evening I caught up with my Canadian travel posse for an evening on the town. They live in a transient house where there a tons of people coming and going all the time so there was quite a party squad out on this night. I/we spent the evening playing games, making new friends, and having the occasional picnic table dance party. I also had the lovely surprise of a birthday tweet from Joe from TVO Kids (see photo - if you grew up in Ontario you will know how exciting this is).

The plan was to go out to a somewhat well-known bar (that is probably well known for the wrong reasons). In the end we were having too much fun at the house and never made it out. After a late night trek to get some food - where I accidentally bought a vegetarian chicken burger (don't ask how - I didn't even know that was a real thing), I hopped the train home and had a good sleep-in.

Overall the birthday in Melbourne was great. Lots of surprises, chats with old friends, and chances to make new ones - exactly how I like it.

Thanks everyone for making the day so awesome!

Aussie friends - you're great.

Joe Motiki - you are actually the coolest.

Other friends - hold on to those thoughts and we can celebrate whenever I run into you next.

Everyone - stay weird.