Easter Sunday & Bugs Bunny

Yesterday was a great Easter, though of course I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that of course I missed home on this special holiday!

To pick up where I left off, we spent the night at Sarah & John’s place, woke up at 7 a.m., got showered up, put on the same clothes (yuck, I hated this) , and then jetted out the door to rush to the train station as we had 11 a.m. brunch plans with two other expat couples. Because we didn’t have a train reservation, it was too hard to tell how long we’d have to wait, so I was nervous that we’d be cutting it close. Our taxi got us to the metro station, then we metro’ed it to the train station, bought tickets for the 8:55 a.m. train, then found an 8:09 train and chanced it that we’d get on it (since we had standing room only tickets for the later train, figured we’d might as well risk getting caught and standing on the earlier train, right?). This meant we had to book it, so we were literally running through the train station, I crowd-controlled it through all the Chinese people (I can so hang with them on this, watch out!), and we made the train. Curt said we should just sit down and act like we had seats, and then move if someone else had the tickets, so we did, and we moved twice, but we ended up in seats at least, and we made it back to Suzhou with about an hour and half, so we showered again (this time with soap and stuff), got pretty for Easter, and then met our friends to go to the Kempenski Hotel for Easter brunch.

I of course wore a dress (Curt told me I didn’t have to dress up so much, but a girl can wear a dress on Easter if she wants), and I met Mike & Carol (maybe late forties, early fifties), and Hans & Mina (maybe mid-thirties). Mike and Hans both have the motorcycle/ sidecar that Curt will be purchasing soon, so they’ll have a boys bike club here before they know it! The hotel was gorgeous, kind of out on its own island, lake views, and lots of expats and families there celebrating the holiday. Bugs Bunny was also there, of course as the Easter Bunny which I got a big kick out of, and it was so nice because the hotel had dyed Easter eggs and used them to decorate all of the flower arrangements, so it was all very festive (they were blown eggs, don’t worry!) and wonderful.

The food was also delicious and it ended up being a 3 hour meal – just slow to enjoy the buffet, all there was to eat, desserts, etc. and lots of tea and coffee, and of course fun getting-to-know-you conversation! So it was very pleasant… if we had to be away from home, at least it was with good company in a place where the holiday was felt, or acknowledged, I think. Somewhere in the middle of the meal, they had 3 young Chinese kids come in and play the violin for us – they were so talented! Also such a sweet gesture, as we were leaving they gave every guest a bunny-shaped loaf of sweet bread! How fun is that?

When we got home we decided to run a couple of errands, so walked around a lot, bought some groceries, and headed home. Then we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – good flick – cooked dinner (we went with one of Kendyl’s famous recipes – chicken, rice, cream of chicken soup, and Tony’s), the bunny bread, and Coke (first time I’ve been able to have it as I gave up all sodas for Lent!) so that was a treat. I had also made brownies (was nervous but they turned out great) so we had that as our special Easter dessert and said thanks for how blessed we both are. Then we watched Serendipity, Curt went to sleep, and I talked to my family and Ashley until it was time for me to go to bed! So more low key than Saturday, but it was just what was needed to recover!

Happy Easter everyone! Thanks to God for sending his son to die for our sins, and for showing us life through Him through his resurrection.

Love,