Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy 3rd of July

It’s somewhat hard to maintain a connection with the major U.S. holidays while living abroad. In addition to very few people actually celebrating them (unless you actively seek out other Americans), they often fall during the work week. While at least the 4th of July fell on a Sunday this year, it was still difficult to get motivated to celebrate given that Monday was a regular work day (the post-4th Monday day-off carry-over doesn’t make its way across the Atlantic).

I did have a bit of a treat to celebrate the 4th, though (albeit on the 3rd for the reason noted above). Emilie decided to make some American classics for dinner – tortilla chips with fresh guacamole followed by burgers and fries and then some freshly baked apple pie with vanilla ice cream for desert.










It was all very good and I don’t think that I’ve eaten so well for the 4th in a long time. And I’m generally not a fan of guacamole (unlike seemingly everyone else on the planet), but I really enjoyed it.

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I’m glad that we ended up having our 4th of July celebration yesterday as we were treated to some crazy weather today. For much of the morning it was sunny with blue skies, but in the afternoon huge thunder clouds came out of nowhere and literally dumped sheets of rain off and on for much of the afternoon.

Here's a picture of the literal calm before the storm.

And here are some pictures that somewhat provide a feel for how hard the rain was coming down.










Given that the storm came from nowhere, most of the people down by the lake got absolutely soaked. There was pretty much nothing you could do except run for cover. Fortunately, I was in my apartment when it all started.

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