Who doesn't like holiday?!?

Americans love Holidays! I don't know where else in the world will have more Holidays than America. Listing basic national Holidays, we got over 10 days already. Beside some traditional Holidays like Christmas Day, New Year Day, Thanksgiving Day, Valentine's Day, Memorial Day or Independent Day,... there are some other Festivals seems just for kids, such as Easter Day, Halloween Day... and some holidays for honor some specific individual that are Father Day, Mother Day or Military Appreciation Day...

Fireworks on Independent day

Sometimes, for few holidays, people don't really care about the meaning of it or do nothing concerned to the meaning of that holiday!! For example, Labor Day (first Monday of September), it is the day to celebrate workers, we don't actually do anything to celebrate it but get a day-off. And I've even read in some magazine that in high society, Labor Day is considered the last day of the year for fashionable women to wear white (because the Fall is coming, and the color for fall season is dark to keep warm). It also marks the beginning of a college football seasons, maybe Americans, because of this reason, care about this day more than it's real meaning! :)

And having a lot of holidays is not enough, American love to celebrate holidays as well. They can celebrate in multiple ways - decorating, party, gathering with family, buying and giving gifts or watching fireworks... Simply, holidays are a chance for people to get day-off from work, so they like them.

Cookout BBQ in one of holidays

Usually on some holidays, it's just the occasion for family members gathering and having some fun together, cooking and hanging around. They often cookout like BBQ or party outdoor, but there are some traditional foods for particular days, such as Roasted Turkey, Apple Pie and Stuffing for Thanksgiving. And not just eating or partying, in some special days, they have to do special things. Like you have to watch or shoot fireworks on Independent Day, you paint the eggs or take your kids to the egg hunt for Easter Day, or on the Halloween Day you have to prepare some candies for "Trick or Treat" or wear costume and join a costume ball.

Babies on the Egg Hunting Field on Easter Day

All the markets and stores always get everything ready for the Holiday about a month ahead. The Fall has just come and I saw orange everywhere in the store already. Pumpkin, ghost,  monsters, vampires, witches, werewolves,....are all around me now ( that is pretty scary )!! And the Halloween day is on October 31, it means about more than one more month! And even Busch Gardens is getting ready for Howl-O-Scream with all the scary rides such as Haunted House and the Scare Zone.

Anne in Giraffe costume in a scary garden on Halloween  

Skeleton (Aiden's insides are out)  

The most fun thing of Holiday is decorating, especially on Halloween and Christmas. My husband says these are the 2 most expensive holidays in America because people keep buying too much things for decoration.

Decoration for Christmas 

A store next to my house with the Halloween color

And I did have some wonderful memories of decorating my own house the first time for Christmas. My Mom-in-law took me to pick up a Christmas tree and gave me some tips to pick the good one. Because Andrew and me have just begun a family, we didn't have anything for decorating, so Mom had to lend us all of her precious stuff. Andrew and I tried to figure out what else we should buy to decorate the house and make the tree look better. That was a remarkable night when we three decorated the tree together. We ended up just hanging all the things of Andrew's family on the tree, but thanks to that I've got a chance to hear more things about Andrew and his family. Mom even showed me which one is the souvenir of 1 year-old-Andrew-baby on his first Christmas.  And I begin to recognize that hanging on the Christmas tree itself was the story of a family. Christmas is actually a chance for people go through the decoration to look back on the path the whole family had passed.

My first Christmas tree

Here is another story about Christmas. The 1st time I went in a Christmas Mouse store, I just ran out from my Mom-in-law like a crazy girl because of too much beautiful things. That store seemed like handing the most beautiful decorating stuff for Christmas. And I saw a bunch of beautiful coats. They just looked like some coats without sleeves I've seen on some movies. When my Mom-in-law found me, I was  trying on one of those coats, and she just burst out laughing because that coat turned out to be a Christmas tree skirt (the thing that you cover on the base of the Christmas tree so that all the needles will not mess up your house's floor!)

Silly me in the "coat"

Sum up, with all the interesting above, who is gonna not like holidays?!! And specially with Americans, they really know how to enjoy their holiday, and know how to make it significant. How about your holidays? How is the most memorable holiday of your family??? :> 

My first crazy American friend

Living in America for about 2 years, I've been making friends with some Americans. But never ever I've met anyone like him - my 1st crazy American friend!!

When I moved in with Andy, I was still a little strange and confused with everything and everyone around me, especially with the language. And I met Micah - the CNU's student of Physics - the roommate that always use so much complicated and new words for me!! For about 2-3 first months, I didn't get it every time he and Andy talked (actually now I still don't understand them sometime >"<). But that caused me the scare of talking with him because I didn't wanna ask him to repeat too much, and even when he repeated, I still don't know those words! Thus, I was hiding in my room almost the time. But then, there is the thing bring us closer to each other - that is cooking!!

I just couldn't eat American food at all. They use cheese in every of their product or they eat cheese with everything they could, even soup or fruit.... That was such a crazy thing with me ( still now though :P). So I've gotta cooking Vietnamese food every night. And there is a thing about American, you should know, they eat out a lot, or at least buy fast food a lot. There aren't a lot of single Americans cooking at home. So it was so weird of this guy that he not only cooked at home but also made his own bread from scratch. And I have to tell, he rocks his bread!! :) Oh My God, I've loved Micah's bread (even though I still think Vietnamese bread is better).

One of Micah's home-made bread

One of my favorite named Challah

I sure couldn't miss the chance to learn some new techniques of cooking and how cool it is to learn how to bake American bread from an American!! And that just happened, we tried to making bread every week. He taught me to make pizza, bagel, Italian bread, white bread.... and in return, I taught him some Vietnamese food such as stir-fried vegetable, egg rolls...

My first yummy pizza

My first Italian bread

And not only ridiculous about cooking habit, but also about the life style!! >_< He lives a ridiculous healthy lifestyle - he eats healthy things, low calories or better food product..., he doesn't like coffee >"<; he goes to the gym everyday, he loves juggling, he doesn't like bar or club, he sticks with his computer more than with his girlfriend, and he is completely 100% a NERD!!! He is cool though! Cool and Crazy!

Beside being a crazy friend, he is such a good and funny friend to hang around with. He is really patient with my horrible English at the beginning and helped me fixing it sometime, or found some website for me learning English. He helped to edit all my writing or resume or whatever I asked him for. We also have some thing in common. We both love Friends (an old comic show). We both love cooking. We both had too much free time to stay around in the house ( actually only on that time). And we both are crazy ( even in different ways)! ;)

So beginning this blog is one of his idea, to help me improve my English writing and he will have more chance to embarrass me with my English >_<. So don't be surprise if you guys see some nasty comments about what I need to fix in my sentences from the comment section ( and he's an perfectionist too :P) But that's the reason I begin this blog, I will try my best to not make any mistake. Also in the other hand, I still want Micah could find out some mistake and fix it, so you guys also can learn from my mistake. :> And in some ways, I need to write down and keep the memory about this wonderful time of my life - such a huge change and overwhelmed emotion - that I would not wanna forget ( because sometime my brain just drops the thing.... )

So, welcome to my blog and hope we will stick around long... :)))