emmasen 182

22Feb09

- Coursemate Maria and her husband are very hospitable to invite to their house and to watch the Carnaval Parade in their village. They came to fetch us too!

- For parade and cafe photos, check out: 'Elvis', 'Queen Beatrix', 'Amy Winehouse', 'Marilyn Monroe', 'Doctors on Duty' - and the loveliliest one of them all - an infant, too young to appreciate the din and rowdiness of carnaval - taking refuge behind a bicycle and his drinking bottle!

- After the parade, we went into a pub for beer. I bought a glass at 1.80euros. And I'm both proud and not-so-proud to say that some guy bought me another beer. Proud in that, well, there's a guy who will buy me a beer. Not so proud in that - hmmrmph, I've forgotten the golden rule of not accepting drinks from strangers. Thank ABBA the drink wasn't spiked - hallelujah!

- For food photos: woww, all these were prepared by host himself! And there was tender beef soup that was stewed for 7hours! Lekker!

- And to share something about ABBA's grace ... Maria had given one box of carnaval costumes for us to dress up, however, no emails informing us about this was made. Coursemates who knew about it started to borrow the costumes. As I didn't know about it until later. By ABBA's grace, one yellow-&-black jumper was left. You know - GOD's grace exceeds our requests and imagination. When I put on the carnaval jumper at Maria's home, she looked at it wistfully and said she had made this jumper, and it was her carnaval costume for a few years! Hmm, what a privilege to be wearing the hostess' handmade costume, out of the box of commercial clothes! And I didn't even plan for it, and was the last person to have one costume left, that nobody else wanted! Talk about ABBA's serendipitious grace!