La Vie Bohème: G A T S B Y

Last night I threw a party and it was wild.

My best friends altogether.

To celebrate my 18th birthday, my cool host parents let me invite all my friends, French and Rotary, over for a night of enjoyment and good times on Saturday. I made the theme of the night "The Great Gatsby." What with the huge movie that came out this year, and a current slow revival of fragments of 1920s fashion in a lot of the stores here in France, I thought it'd be a cool theme to spice up the night and everyone's party look. Also Liz gave me the idea and everyone loved it, so that was that. I started prepping the basement for the party on Monday, Marie Jo and I went downstairs and took a look around trying to figure out what storage rooms we could transform into party worthy areas and what would work where etc etc. In other words: Planning Stage.
On Tuesday, Marion, Sixtine and Ana came over after school to help clean up and arrange the basement rooms where the party would be. By the time the girls left later in the evening, there had been huge progress, and you could barely tell it was the same room as the one I checked out on Monday with Marie Jo!
Throughout the rest of the week with the help of my friends and host family, the basement began to undergo transformation after transformation until it turned into this rather wonderful French Gatsby setup:

Walk down steps...

Turn right...

Enter the "lounging room" then turn right again...

the dancing room (and an adorable christmas tree with some birthday presents underneath)

lounging room

Those photos were taken moments before everyone arrived Saturday night, but it was busy busy busy during the day trying to get things to look like that. School came and went Saturday morning (and felt like it lasted 80 days too...) and afterwards I went with Chloe to Marion's house for lunch. I got to meet Marion's adorable and incredibly nice family and have lunch with them, then us girls headed out to come back to my place and start preparing.

From the moment we got back to my house till the moment everyone arrived for the party it was a bit of a rush. We had to make sure everything was ready for my 24 friends that were coming to pass the evening. Ana, Sixtine, and Louise soon arrived and after us girls made sure basically everything was good to go, we went back up to my room to start getting ready. Thus follows Operation Feather Boa. The next hour and a half was one of flying feathers that lost their mother boas, black eyeliner and red lipstick, and an explosion of hair pins partout. It was crazy, but it was fun. Afterwards, everyone seemed to come at once, and what followed was some embarrassing dancing, uncontrollable laughing and slightly-more-than-slightly-off-key singing. It was just the greatest night ever. It turned out better than I ever could have expected and I had a swell time. I'm really so so lucky with the friends I have here on exchange, the French ones and Rotary alike. There's something really cool about feeling like you have a family somewhere that is so far and so different from the place you call home. I'm also so thankful that my host family was so awesome in letting me celebrate my birthday with friends like this. It meant a lot and there is no way I could ever forget it.

These are my favourite photos of the night, but be sure to check out the Photos tab above to see them all :)