Happy Easter - From Croatia!

I met a friendly Croatian lady who speaks fluent English. She now lives in Zagreb, a major city here, but she was raised in Split - where we are renting a short term apartment in Croatia over the Easter break and late spring time. She told me of the Croatian traditional Easter game, where each person cracks a hard boiled egg for Easter. This is known as egg tapping, egg knocking or egg boxing, among other names. The person with the least cracks is the winner. I told her of our American tradition of how one person hides the eggs and the rest look for it. She thought that was a lovely idea.

Although this video is of Greek Americans, the game is the 

same one as in Croatia. Red is the traditional color, to symbolize
 the blood of Christ. However, other colors are also used. It can be
played in the air (as in this video) or on a table top.

Croatians are Catholics so Easter is a major holiday here. The stores and shops are closed on Easter. You'd be hard pressed to find a taxi. That is because everyone is with family - at church, visiting homes, cooking, playing games or eating. Though I considered visiting a Croatian Catholic church, in the end, due to our limited knowledge of Croatian, we decided to stream the Easter service instead. We had our normal Easter foods we easily found in the local market: ham, potatoes, carrots, and corn. Delicious!

My kids normally cook for me - but not during the holidays. During the holidays, I cook for
 them! I love to cook for my family during the holidays. Sometimes, they want to cook, too! (S. Galo)

The children in this area of Croatia play in the afternoons before being called inside to do chores. But, they also come out when it's dark. This seems odd, doesn't it? So, after the sun sets they start emerging from their small apartments to play in the local courtyard. It's fairly cold by then and there are zero parents present. Some of the children are no more than three years old but the older children watch out for them. They will play out there until about 8 pm, when they slowly start freezing (it's still cold at night here) and head home. The older kids will sit around on a low wall talking while the younger ones play. My kids don't want to go out after dark to join them, though - not because they're afraid but because it's so cold then.

We've only been here two weeks but we've met a neighborhood girl about age eleven, who is shy but friendly and always says hello to us. She has a cute puppy dog she carries around but she, like most of the children, are called inside in the afternoons to do chores so after a short period outside, she is inside the rest of the afternoon. We've also met some middle school girls who love to go to the grocery store for ice cream and pass us on our afternoon walk. They speak excellent English and told us they learned it in school but none of their parents speak English. An interesting thing is that young people are considered adults early here - marriage-ready by age eighteen, if they choose, but most do not. They are legally allowed to leave school at age fourteen to work to support the family, though many do stay in school at least to finish their secondary education (their version of high school). Duty to the family is considered highly important here.

What a relaxing Easter weekend it has been. We did our annual family Easter egg hunt at the beach and had a lot of laughs. We only had one egg casualty that we had to leave behind (someone stepped on it). We laughed about that, too.

First, we painted the eggs. (L. Galo)

Then, we hunted for the eggs... an egg hunt along the beach - how novel! (L. Galo)

- Li Galo (mom to three fabulous and fantastic homeschoolers)



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