Missing Holidays

When I was in Europe last time, I ended up having Easter in Paris and going to Notre Dame cathedral for morning mass before quietly having chicken nuggets by myself for Easter dinner. This year I'll be missing every holiday except Christmas, so it seems appropriate that I hurry up and figure out how to best get it done.

The hard part about 4th of July is that where Easter in France was different, 4th of July in the Netherlands doesn't exist. There are some expats bars a ways away, but for the most part, no one even has it on the radar. Granted, this year I will get to celebrate some holidays that were never on MY radar before, so that is exciting, but to not even be here for two weeks and miss something big is slightly hard. Harder still when people remind me that there will be another 4th of July, but I will miss next year's too, so that means my next 4th of July will be 2016, when I am 24. Weirdness. Not impossible to deal with, but weird.

So how did I celebrate this year? First, I cried to my host mom, who was really helpful. I played videos of the Bully Hill Brass Band. For lunch my host mom bought me these prepackaged cheeseburgers that you heat up in the microwave. They were not good, but having someone remember and acknowledge the holiday helped a lot. Then for dinner we want to this Dutch snack bar, where I had chicken nuggets and a milkshake (I didn't realize how different it would taste, but it did, and that made me little sad again) and then came home and watched tv. Somewhere in there I also went horseback riding, which Vanessa took video of that I will post later.

I don't love Thanksgiving, so I won't miss it hopefully. That's what I'm telling myself, at least. In the meantime, just taking each week and each day as it comes.