Easter! Coming from a very close, Catholic family, I have spent every Easter and every Christmas attending family lunches and cooking for days in advance to prepare the perfect feast. I even made a video project for school about how you make traditional decorated eggs for Easter in Bosnia and Herzegovina last year. Here are some pictures of them my family sent me this year:
Not going to lie - it's pretty lonely to be reading a book alone in your dorm the day before Easter instead of getting the table ready and going to mass. Holidays without family were what I was dreading, and despite my expectations, they didn't turn out to be the worst thing in the world.
God bless Facetime because it allowed me to join my family's lunch, however briefly. I wanted to hug each and every person on the tiny screen, but that's also only 3 weeks away, so I did not cry.
I had the luck of making friends on campus who were in the same situation! There was an Easter service in the chapel, starting with refreshments at 10:30, I was surprised at how many familiar faces showed up! It's a bonding experience, either way, encountering all these people who also wished they could hug someone. My friend and I ate some cookies, chatted with people, and listened to the service.
She convinced me to come along to an egg hunt with her, which I gladly did. For an hour and a half, our team of 4 ran around campus looking for plastic eggs and hints in Spanish on how to find the next one and get more candy. Acting like a child genuinely does help with that innocent happiness of the holidays.
My advice for surviving the holidays: facetime, and keep yourself busy. Don't be alone in your room. 99% of the time, there is some event related to the holiday organized on campus, and it helps the time pass. Even when it's over, don't be alone. After the egg hunt, I cooked lunch with a friend and had a great time, and then that night, we watched a Bratz movie. I didn't do any homework, that would've killed the holiday spirit.
Stay healthy, happy holidays, and here's an awesome picture of Mt. Hood and an adorable puppy.
