4,500 miles away

A British friend in South Africa once told me that the longer you live abroad, the more patriotic you feel towards your "home" country. After almost 9 years of living abroad in 4 different countries, I feel that he may have been correct in his observation. We may be living over 4, 500 miles away from England, but I felt very frustrated at missing out on England's great national celebrations for the Queen's Jubilee last weekend! The English girl in me was all geared up to wave my Union Jack and to join the celebrations from afar!

To feel included in some small way, we tried to keep up with events via the BBC news on the internet and even got to watch some of the flotilla on BBC Live TV on Sunday afternoon, at the bishop's house: it was a treat to watch TV and to see events unfolding as they happened all those miles away!

On Tuesday afternoon, after the children had been at school, we had a small Jubilee Tea Party for Esther, Ben and Joel and 3 of their  little friends. It was lots of fun! Esther and Ben worked hard making some paper and string celebration bunting, which we hung up in the house as decoration. We all dressed up in patriotic red, white and blue- even the children's Swiss, American and NZ friends!
There were crown pictures to decorate:

...followed by a made-up game of hiding the Queen's Jewels...
...and of course a Jubilee Tea, complete with Union Jacks on sticks to decorate the sausages, cucumber sandwiches and red, while and blue jubilee cake!! (I was not ambitious enough to attempt a Union Jack for the icing decoration!!)

Joel did not fully grasp the point of the tea party, but that did not stop him enjoying the occasion and he had his eye on that cake as soon as he sat down with his mini, blue plateful of jubilee food!!