Skip to main content

St. George's Day

Well, St. Patrick's Day is a pretty big thing over here, as everyone with a smidgen of Irish ancestry (and plenty of people without) suddenly discover their roots and use it as an excuse to dress up and drink lots of green beer. So we came back from a night on the town watching a Storm Trooper swill Guinness and guys in kilts wear silly hats and thought, "Hey! Why should the Irish have all the fun?" So off we went to buy some silly hats... oh no, sorry, wrong story! So we decided to throw a St. George's Day party.


First things first: the food. Can't have a party without food. The advantage of living in a foreign country is that your average English foods are greeted as exotic rarities. The disadvantage is that you can't just go to the supermarket and bulk-buy sausage rolls. You have to start a sausage roll production line. Sausage roll making is actually pretty fun!


Ditto for the scones, flapjack, coronation chicken and cheese twists. We did manage to track down some British biscuits in an Indian food shop, though, including some dodgy bourbon rip-offs. The flapjack was the clear winner in taste tests - everyone was raving about it.




We'd rashly promised "dragon's blood punch" to drink, not having any idea how to make such a concoction. The ever-helpful internet came up trumps, as usual. The resulting mixture of cranberry juice, apple juice and ginger ale (and vodka for the alcohol crowd) tasted good but had a tendency to stain everything pink. We were rather concerned for our cream carpets but such a disaster never occurred.


Of course, no St. George's Day party is complete without vast quantities of English flags. A friend kindly gave us a huge one which made a great focal point, and we stuck up a few strings of small ones. Some quotes and English-themed pictures completed the look.


It's a good feeling when you know enough people to actually consider throwing a party. The process of making friends in a new place is a slow and sometimes frustrating one. You meet people. They say they'd love to get to know you. You have dinner together once and never see them again. You meet more people. One or two introduce you to their friends. You go to a party with them all and promptly forget all their names. It feels like one step forwards, two steps back, but one day you realise you have, if not quite bosom buddies, at least enough friendly acquaintances to throw a party without complete embarrassment.

We were happy to welcome about 20 people, which was a good fit for our moderately-sized apartment. Most were either from church or Graham's work, plus a few we knew from other places. It was a good mix of people and everyone seemed to have fun. We certainly did! Of course once it all kicked off we entirely forgot to take photos, but I'm sure you can imagine. Just think of the best party you've ever been to, then double it! Stay tuned for next year...
Labels:

Comments

Ann Summerville said…
I stopped by your blog today. Lovely to see St. George's Day celebrated. Very few people know that the Union Jack is not the English flag.
Ann
Ann Summerville
Cozy In Texas
10 May 2010 at 20:55
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drought

Two days into Stage One water restrictions, and I looked out of the window to see the guy over the road washing his car. Admittedly, the restrictions don't actually forbid you to wash your car.  They limit you to using a hand-held bucket (does it count if you put it down on the driveway?) or hand-held hose "for quick rinses".  But they are pretty much "if you don't mind" rules at this stage anyway, with holes large enough to lose whole buckets of water through (hand-held or otherwise).  For example, we are now limited to watering our lawn twice a week, but this only applies to sprinkler systems.  You can still use a hose as much as you like, presumably on the assumption that you will get bored of standing there holding it very quickly.  And besides, everything you read about good watering technique says it's better to water thoroughly just once a week.  Our garden would think Christmas had come early if it got watered every three days! So hopefully...
2 comments
Read more

Jesus came to earth... to reflect God to us

Do you remember playing with a magnifying glass on a sunny day?   That curved piece of glass you held in your hand captured the scattered rays, narrowing them down to a fluttering patch of brightness.   And all the light’s power was held in that one small circle, shrinking and shrinking… until finally you were rewarded with a sudden curl of smoke, and a neat charred hole. Imagine, then, that God, seeking to reveal himself on earth, condensed his essential being through some kind of celestial magnifying glass.   That wavering point became smaller and smaller, losing none of its power… until it became the exact size of a human baby, growing in a womb. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, says the verse in Colossians, the perfect reflection of God’s glory.   This is the first and greatest reason that Jesus came: to show us what God is really like.   Yet sometimes, reflected and refracted through 2000 years of history, the image that Jesus shows...
2 comments
Read more

Making a mess

My friend Ellie writes a blog which I now shamelessly crib ideas from, when I am stuck for something new to do with Toby.  Some time ago she wrote about a substance with the poetic moniker of cloud dough .  It sounded simple to make and fun to play with, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind. The recipe is childishly simple: 8 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of vegetable oil, and mix.  It comes out kind of sandy, although softer and more powdery. Now, Ellie has two gorgeous girls.  Her blog entries were full of photos of them adding pretty objects and creating cute little landscapes.  I, on the other hand, have a full-on hands-on get-stuck-in-as-far-as-possible boy.  This is what happens when you let him loose on a scatterable substance. We make it and it all starts well.  Notice I have prepared for mess with a large tarpaulin and lack of shorts. A few minutes in, and the mess is spreading up the T-shirt.  It's still mostly in the t...
2 comments
Read more