Greek Easter Part 1

I'm sure you all are waiting desperately (!) for my Greek Easter stories and I have so many. I can only skim around the details for reasons of family privacy and because I don't want Mr Zeus to think I'm mocking his family. I'm already in the dog house with him for losing my temper with his mother. Mistake.

So picture this. Me, my mother, Mr Zeus, his mother, his grandma, his best friend, my best friend and his aunt all locked in a 45 square meter house for Easter. You can imagine the comedy moments that took place. His aunty talks non stop. NON STOP. I thought he was exaggerating when he warned me, but hell no. I've never seen anyone in my life talk like that from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep.

My future mother in law (FMIL) went into overdrive about how everything from the White House to my best friend's name was Greek (she has a Greek sounding name). The aunty decided to try out her blood sugar meter, the sort that involves pricking your finger for blood, on Yiayia just for the heck of it but naturally Yiayia wasn't having any of it. My best friend made the mistake of trying to make a cup of tea for herself and was ambushed in the kitchen.

I was on translation overtime and felt my braincells commit suicide one by one, and of course when I pondered what the english was for a word that directly translates to see you again, I was reminded that naturally I couldn't translate since English only was 45,000 words and Greek has 1 million. Aunty also decided to call me Maria all the time since my own name was too hard for her, a concession I usually only make for Yiayia because of her age, but by then I had given up already. What was my inferior culture with my inferior name anyway?

I walked past a fire we had started to keep extra coals going as it decided to flare up for a split second. There was a flash of heat, a crackling sound and the smell of burning hair as I squeezed my eyes shut and yelped. When I opened them... yes, half the length of my eyelashes on my left eye is gone. I look like I randomly took a pair of scissors and decided to trim them. I'm wondering if I wear mascara on one eye if it'll hide what happened.

You know what it made me think? Greece is just the Home Country but populated with Greeks. There is next to no difference between the two in their hospitality and culture of force feeding guests. It also provided great training for me because you grow up learning 10,000 ways to politely decline overbearing matriarchs. But obviously not enough, because the one lesson I forgot from Home Country life is never, ever say anything bad about your man's mother.

Sigh. It was fun. It was also exhausting and I'm glad there is another year left before next Easter. It all makes me wonder... with such mother hens scratching around, stressing each other out and nagging, my wedding next year is going to be hell on earth. Just when I had figured out how to bypass all my own interfering relatives. I don't even want to think about it now.

I have lots of fun moments and firsts from Greek Easter to relay about my first red egg dying and my first May Catcher which I'll do another time. As you can tell I'm still down in the dumps from being in the dog house. :-(