This is the first blog entry in a series about my life in America. Today I would like to talk about Easter and my childhood experience.

 

I remember Easter very vividly. The smell of the fresh flowers and the Easter candy are still very fresh in my mind. When I was a young child all of our extended family would go every year to my grandparents' house for Easter dinner and an Easter Egg hunt. We would go Saturday, one day before Easter. Lamb is the traditional food to be eaten on Easter but somehow I don't recall eating it on that day.

 

I remember when I was in elementary school, my same-aged cousin, who had always arrived before my family would be waiting for me upstairs and busily planning our Easter Egg hunt attack plan. He used to draw treasure maps of the backyard. I remember his maps and the marks he put on them to indicate where he thought the eggs were. They would always be scribbled in crayon. We would make the maps from the second floor while looking out onto the backyard where the Easter Hunt would take place. We would take the treasure maps and look outside from every window from the second floor to try to find the eggs before the hunt started. We would look out from the 2nd floor study, and bathroom. I think we even tried looking out of the attic a few times even though it was on the opposite side of the house. This would go on for many years.

We would wait to be called by the grown-ups to come down to start the hunt. Every year we thought our map would work.  But every year the eggs wouldn't be where we thought they would be. We found quite a lot of them anyway. After the Easter Egg Hunt and dinner we would say goodbye to our extended family and go back to my family home to wait for the Easter Bunny to come the next morning.

The next morning when my sister woke up we found eggs hidden all over the house. Additionally there was a special Easter Basket with small gifts, toys and candy. The toys and candy were fine when I was a little child but as I grew up the Easter Bunny would leave money instead. Then after the early morning excitement After our morning's breakfast we would go to church and wish everyone a Happy Easter.

This is how my family mostly spent Easter. The Easter Egg hunt is still going on today. I wonder if all my cousins are still having a similar experience that I had?

Thank you for reading.

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