Happy Easter

It's funny how living in a Muslim country makes you want to celebrate Christian religious holidays more intensely than before. So, yesterday we colored eggs to get ready for the Easter Bunny.

I went to the grocery store to get the supplies and the Philippino cashier was oohing and awing (ok if anyone knows how to really spell that, tell me) over the cuteness of it all. She asked me, "why do they symbolize Easter with a rabbit over here." If anyone knows the David Sedaris sketch about the discussion of Easter tradition in a French for foreigners class in Paris, you'll know why I started giggling uncontrollably.

David never really answered the question and all I could think of was the symbolism of "spring, life, babies, doing it like rabbits" but somehow couldn't formulate it appropriately in the time it took Josephine to ring up my purchases. I settled for a shrug and left it at that.

The trick to hunting for Easter eggs here is to get the chocolate ones left in the yard before the sun melts them. My kids were up for the challenge and were outside at 6:30 in their PJs. Ming even got in on the action.

By the time I got downstairs - they had gathered up all the loot and bit into the ears of the chocolate bunnies. We just had enough time to snap a few pics and yell at the kids about eating SOMETHING for breakfast even though they were already full on Chocolate and jellybeans, before Philippe had to go to work.

This afternoon we're going to mass with all the Philippinos (boy those are churchgoing people!!). I figure it's time for the kids to start learning about their Christian heritage, before they start to think they actually ARE Muslim and that "God" is just another way to say "Allah." Tonight we'll have the traditional French Easter meal - lamb, lima beans, more chocolate and of course, Champagne - sorry Allah!!