April is Autumn, yes, I still try to remember that. And Autumn is the season for a series of short work weeks. Ahh... cooler days (I can really wear jeans again, and sometimes even the odd sweater), and long weekends. It's a grand time of year!
The Chocolate Holiday
The holiday season Downunder starts with a goodie -- a 4-day weekend for Easter. You may remember this if you read my update email last year about this time, but I still can't quite get over it... Easter here is all about chocolate! Ok, not ALL about chocolate. It's very much about church and faith, about the resurrection and hope, about having a big noisy meal with lots of family (at least that's what it was to us and those I've always celebrated with, in both countries.)
But here, it's NOT about some of my childhood springtime memories...which made me just a bit sad & nostalgic this year (for a minute or 2). It's not about coloured Easter eggs -- Chicken eggs here are all brown. You don't colour them. Dan claims you can you can find white eggs and dye them, but I think they're rather hard to find. He did it once or twice as a kid, but I've yet to find any other Australian who shares those hard-boiled-dyed-Easter-egg-hunt childhood memories. And it's still weird to me to celebrate Easter without the aroma of Spring -- without daffodils and lilies and lots of rain and new green grass. Those things always seemed to support the idea of new life for me. Not here. You have to believe in new life without new grass or lilies.
But don't despair for the Aussie children! There's no lack of fun for them. The Easter bunny (or The Easter Bilby, if you're into saving native Australian wildlife, which many people are these days) brings Chocolate Easter Eggs. in every imaginable shape and flavour and brightly coloured wrapping. and chocolate bunnies. (and chocolate bilbies!) I made the mistake of going to the shopping centre on the Thursday before the big Easter weekend. Oh dear! Darrell Lea is a popular chocolate chain here -- it's one of those places that always smells delicious. The people in that shop overflowed down the hallway and they lined up for about 5 shops down. This is how people love their friends and family on Easter here -- they give chocolate. Lots of it! To lots of people!
MMMmmm... I like Easter!! And don't get me wrong...even though it's Autumn, it's not like there are no flowers around. just different ones. There are always flowering trees in Brisbane. :)
The Not-so-public Public Holiday
For our 2-year wedding anniversary we got a day off together! It was a much-needed day off, after the moving in and the start of Dan's full-on Saturday flying job. Our anniversary just happened to fall on Easter Monday this year, so we had all day to celebrate. It was a good good day...and we reminisced over a very good two years. :) Can't believe how quick it's gone...
Since it was the end of the school holidays at the time, the only movies at the theatres were pretty much kids movies. So we saw Ice Age 2. Fun little flick. Not as good as the first one actually, but we were just happy to be out at the movies together. Then we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I thought about my parents who have recently celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary quite happily together. They went out to dinner too, and tried to remember all the places they'd lived in the 3o years, and tried to put them in order. How many homes has it been for you guys... 22? I wonder what we'll be remembering in 28 years from now.
Ok, there are more public holidays, but that's going to be the next post, otherwise this would get too long.
so....
to be continued!
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