| | Weekly Photo Challenge: How Was Your Holiday?This weeks subject is suggested by LadyLioness1973
HOW WAS YOUR HOLIDAY?
I've had several holidays here and there. Yeah. I can post a picture from Istanbul or Vientiane. I have pictures from the cobbled streets spreading along the canals of Amsterdam and pictures on a boat in Australia where we fed alligators (or were they crocodiles - I forget the distinctions but then again I was never one to do well with the life sciences).
Maybe you mean an actual holiday instead of trip or vacation. It doesn't have necessarily the same meaning in the U.S. or at least where I'm from - the Midwest. We usually say the name of the holiday in my home state. "How was your Fourth?" - pertaining to one's celebration of the Fourth of July. How was your New Year's/Christmas/Easter?
All those had taken on new meanings for me when I was overseas traveling around each time I have been abroad.
Being back in the States, I noticed that I don't have much in the way of ritual for holidays. All the things that I did as a child: hunting for easter eggs, Christmas presents under the tree, fireworks, Valentine's Day chocolate, etc. all were focused around kids. Once I've grown up, that's all gone by the wayside and now holidays are just another day off.
On the flipside, I've noticed how other cultures have taken an approach to Western holidays adding their own ethnic flourishes to the mix. For instance, I was in Cambodia, visiting Angkor Wat as Christmas approached. Because my accommodation was in Siem Reap, the nearest town for getting onto the old Angkorian complex, and filled with tourists from all over the world, especially from the West, a Christmas tree was installed opposite where a Buddha, I am conjecturing, sits all year long.
Valentine's Day 2006 corresponded to my visit to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. I had made several friends while I was there and dragged one of them to lunch with me. I really have never been one for Valentine's and so when my friend, who is a woman, brought this up. My reply was a shrug of the shoulders. Earlier that morning, the Chinese woman who had helped me set up a last minute diving adventure at Sipadan where I would leave KK for the next day wished me a happy Valentine's Day in a very suggestive voice. Obviously, she put more thought and meaning into the day than I had.
Speaking of Valentine's Day, the very next holiday - if you would call it that, I spent walking through the consequences of a freak blizzard that swept over the Cleveland area and shut down the school. What was suppose to be a day on became a day off - until I had to help my roommates shovel the driveway.
That's how one my holidays was.
(c) Colin Nisbet 2007
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| | Posted 5/3/2008 4:06 PM - 6 comments
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