Easter

 

Bit late for a post about Easter.  Perhaps I should save it and combine it with Christmas and do a ‘Celebrations of Jesus’ special!  Or not.

Easter tree at school

A few differences between Australia and Austria for Easter.  Australia:  aisle after aisle full of hundreds of brightly wrapped chocolate eggs in all shapes and sizes in various brands, mostly packaged in elaborate boxes accompanied with a toy or a gift of some sort at ridiculous prices, adorning the shelves just after Valentines Day.  Austria:  Milka or Lindt.  Small, medium or large bunny.  Couple of options for small individually wrapped chocolates in packets in the shape of eggs, chicks or bunnies.  Making an appearance a few weeks before Easter.  And that is all.  Australia:  Kids going hunting on Easter Sunday with a huge basket filling it with dozens of foil wrapped chocolate eggs and then receiving a massive egg with toy from every member of their immediate and extended family and even some from friends resulting in a pantry full of chocolate which makes mum fat and spotty and has to be used up in muffins before it goes off and before it’s added to at Christmas.  Austria:  kids with homemade basket the size of an adults cupped hand running around looking for coloured hard boiled eggs which they pile together in one big basket and then sit down together and eat one with a piece of bread for morning tea.  Accompanied by a tiny bunny (Lindt) and one gummy sweet given by the teacher.  Good Friday:  Australia:  Everything is closed.  You can only eat fish (fish and chip shop here we come).  Everybody chillaxes and eats and drinks and drinks.  Austria:  Everything is open.  You can’t buy fish, except a whole fish, scales and head and eyes and all, and there are no fish n chip shops.  Everyone goes to work, normal day.  Easter Sunday:  Australia:  Get together with family, eat chocolate, eat and drink and eat.  Do nothing.  Austria:  Go to church.  Eat boiled eggs.



We had boiled eggs coming out of our ears!  As with every season or occasion in Austria everyone puts homemade decorations at their doors and in their windows.  It’s a bit naff, but I like it, but then I am a bit naff myself.  Before Easter and at the start of Spring you can pick thin branches that grow by the water that bud little fluffy white things that resemble rabbits tails.  I can’t remember what they’re called but they’re lovely and everyone hangs decorated eggs on them.  Both kindergarten classrooms had one and each child had to bring in 3 blown out eggs to decorate to hang on it.  I had never heard of blown out eggs and so I asked the teacher to show me how to do it as Amelia needed to take some in.  If you don’t know, you get a pin, and carefully poke a tiny hole at each end (not as easy as it sounds) and then literally blow the gucky stuff out of it (not as easy as it sounds).  So this is what I did at home, and I felt like I was giving birth but trying not to, if you know what I mean.  Next day I went in to work where the teacher was preparing some eggs incase some children forgot to bring them in.  She used a little contraption not unlike a bike pump especially for blowing out eggs.  Well, why didn’t you tell me that before??  But I was impressed with the way she decorated them using marble paint, then threading through ribbon and beads to hang them on the tree.  The week before Easter we took the class out into the woods, had a picnic, and each child collected a stick with two prongs which we then took back to the classroom to make easter bunnies with, by adding two googly eyes and some fleece for the body.  Pretty cool idea. 

Easter hike with obstacles

Good Friday (school was closed and Maciek was unemployed) we enjoyed a bit of a sleep in (unusual) till about 7am and woke to a deer meandering across the field below us, from one bit of forest to another.  It was a wet and cold weekend, misty across the mountains, and we went out for a walk in the woods and a little picnic under the shelter of a tree.  It’s awesome in the woods on days like that, feels like being on the set of Lord of the Rings.  We had to negotiate our way around huge fallen trees, and all the debris caused by the heavy snow.  Easter Sunday the kids hunted for eggs, miniature kinder surprise ones individually wrapped in a packet is all I could find, and in all the excitement we didn’t even notice that it was snowing!  Nooooo!  We all said.  Amelia had been so excited about the prospect of being able to wear a dress and sandals, and we’d just packed away all our winter gear.  But it was pretty, and it didn’t last.  The next day it was gone. 

"Noah's got more than me!!"

Since then it has warmed up, so much so that for the past few days it has been 30 degrees, and this week it will be mid 20’s.  So Milly has realized at last her dream of wearing a dress again.  Also since then we have welcomed into the world our new little nephew and cousin, Lucas, born on Thursday 26^th April.  Congratulations Jo, Andrew, Jakson and Ollie!  Looking forward to meeting little Lucas soon.  XXXX

p.s  here is a pic of Milly dressed up as Pippi Longstocking.  Prizes for guessing how we got her hair to stand up like that!

Pippi