Long weekend

We just had a long weekend - yes one week before the NZ Queens Birthday weekend and two weeks before the Australian one. They call them 'holidays' here, which as I am starting to get used to, are different from 'vacations'. Holidays seem to be official public holidays and vacations are what you request off from work (although people don't seem to look too confused when I talk about going 'on holiday' rather than 'on vacation'). This weekend was 'Memorial Day' which is kind of like Anzac Day in NZ/Australia although without quite so much awe/reverence attached to it. There was quite a bit of confusion about which shops were open and it doesn't seem like there are laws against being open like in NZ. The other thing that was quite different was that it didn't seem so much about remembering people that had died in the 1st and 2nd World Wars etc as I am used to, but there was very much an awareness that the country IS at war. Quite a different feeling. Very 'current'. As with all the other holidays so far, some people decorated their houses. Yes, lots of flags and some red/white/blue wreaths. Interesting. I wonder if they then stay up until 4th of July? So far on the house decorating front I have seen 'Fall' which is sort of combined with a 'Halloween' theme, 'Christmas', 'red' for Valentiens Day, 'Spring' and now the patriotic look. I am quite intrigued by this practice.

Memorial Day also is the unofficial start to Summer and barbeque-ing is the defining action of the day. Jamie fired up the BBQ and we had a little picnic on a blanket at home on Monday before coming back to Saginaw for the week. We also had a bike ride around the neighbourhood for a couple of hours. There were a lot of people visiting the cemetary as we biked past so I assume that Memorial Day is also about anyone that died, unless there are lots and lots of veterans buried near us. To me, the word 'veteran' has always meant an old person that came back from war, but here it doesn't have the same 'old' connotation because there are so many people that have been in the military at some time. There seems to be quite a few people that we know who were in the first Iraq war who are only our age or younger. The cemetary not only had flags placed every few metres along the fenceline, but also poking out of the ground all over it. At first I thought that everyone who was a veteran had a flag, but then I realised that they were all over the non-burial parts as well. The cemetary seems to go on for acres and acres and so there were probably tens of thousands of flags. Initially I thought that maybe everyone who visited for the day got a flag and they could put it wherever they wanted, but then I realised that they were placed in an orderly fashion so it must have been done by the people that work there. I wondered how many days it took to place them all.

I'm also quite surprised how inextricably linked Summer is with Christmas in my mind. We went shopping at Costco and all the Summer things were there - plastic pool toys, BBQs, outdoor swings, beach chairs (yes there are sandy beaches here in Michigan - they are just on lakes!) and to me it felt like Christmas shopping at 'The Warehouse' but rather strange as it is not December.

Overall, we had a nice weekend with three whole days at home rather than just two! We weren't completely home all the time because on Saturday we drove to Lansing to go to church with Jamie's mom and to see his Dad so that was a full day out and about. Next weekend we won't be home as we are going north for the weekend and the following one we'll only have one day there because on the Sunday we fly to California to see Rebecca and Jeremy. Maybe we need to re-title the blog 'a few bits and pieces from jamie and victoria's life in a suitcase'!