Easter Weekend

I never really wondered about the Easter Bunny and why he brings little children eggs, or how he might go about obtaining eggs in the first place. But this Easter weekend, I again found myself at the dinner table, answering questions about random stuff that Americans believe. 

When you stop to think about it, this tradition is kind of terrifying.

According to my research, eggs and hares are a symbol of fertility, adding to the theme of Spring, blooming flowers, and new life. Also, in ancient times, hares were thought to be hermaphrodites, meaning they could reproduce without a loss of virginity and were therefore associated with the Virgin Mary. The whole thing about the bunny bringing candy to good children originated in Germany because apparently they needed something halfway through the year to keep their children in line.

"That's so weird and not very logical!" Say my French people.

What is logical to French people? 

Bells with wings that fly through the night.

For a few days before Easter, Church bells in France are silent to mourn Jesus. This was not an exciting enough reason for the bells to be silent, so someone fabricated a story about the bells leaving their steeples to go to Rome (explaining their silence) (also an excellent choice for a quick weekend getaway) and then they return on Easter, bringing chocolates and colored eggs.

Saturday night mass at the church in Le Tampon where Richard's mom sings in the choir.

Easter weekend with my Catholic in-laws includes spending 3 hours in mass Saturday night, (with a Pastor from Madagascar whose accent I did not understand) then eating fois gras and home-made mango chutney for dinner. On Sunday, they spent the entire morning cooking a feast for lunch (grilled lobster and cari chicken) while we headed out to the only two things open on Easter Sunday: the SPCA to see the puppies, and the Brocante, which is the town's monthly garage sale/market.

As a dog person, I need a dog in my life to survive. Since my dog is on the other side of the world, and us getting a new puppy is a stupid idea in an apartment, I have to get my puppy fix by making Richard take me to the SPCA as often as possible. Reunion has a major problem with stray cats and dogs (It seems to me that no one cared about the strays around the island for a LONG time... until the population of ugly, diseased cats and dogs started to become ridiculous...)

A very common scene at restaurant patios...poor puppy

However, cuddling with insane amounts of sad, cute puppies still could not fill the Charlie-shaped hole in my heart!!

To get to the SPCA, you have to go down "prostitute lane," which is just a road in the middle of tall sugar cane fields where tons of girls hang out all day on fold-out chairs waiting for customers. We passed a cop car on the way back though, so I think for those girls it turned out to be a pretty crappy day at work. 

In Reunion, if you have a bunch of old stuff to sell, you don't have a garage sale, because odds are you don't have a garage. Instead, on the last Sunday of the month, everybody who has stuff to sell goes into a giant parking lot and displays their items neatly on blankets. Or creepily in the backs of their beaten-down white vans.

I went with high hopes of finding some unique art, cool frames, or other deco stuff for the apartment but instead we walked out with some 5-for-1euro DVDs and books. Oh well.

After that we came home for the feast and spent the next few hours around the table eating, drinking and talking about life. 

We didn't see Richard's sister and her family because they were doing stuff with the kids all day...so we were slightly surprised when she called us up at 8pm after we were already back in St. Gilles. Her and her husband and a couple of their friends were itching to go out, so she was dropping off the kids and they would be at our apartment in an hour. This is something that they never do, so as you might imagine, we all drank a few too many whisky and cokes in the apartment and then decided to go across the street to the nightclubs. We danced for hours, drank lots of rum and a little tequila, ran around on the beach and stole beautiful smelling flowers from trees. I think it was an appropriate way to end the celebrations of Zombie Jesus Day.