An American Holiday Abroad

Throwback Thursday!


Spending any holiday without the company of friends and family is always a little disheartening. In America we have a few "big" holidays where it is customary to come together and celebrate: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and the Fourth of July to name a few. This is the second "Fourth of July" we have spent together abroad - it also seems to be one of the most awkward holidays to celebrate from another country, because it's exclusively an American holiday. Now that have a few "Fourth of July's" abroad under our belt, we feel qualified to discuss what to do as an American overseas for this occasion!

For those of you who do not know, July 4th is our Independence Day in the United States. We celebrate by having BBQs or picnics, waving Old Glory (our flag), and wearing red, white, and blue. In the evening we watch firework displays around the city, on TV, or set off our own! Of course outside of United States, July 4th is just another day on the calendar.

Two years ago we were in London when July the 4th rolled around. For some reason, Megan seems to think not celebrating this holiday is devastating... probably because she has a degree in American History. Either way, to satisfy our patriotic obsession we Googled "4th of July events" that were happening in London. Ironically there are a lot of festivities planned for Americans to celebrate in the UK. We ended up finding a group of University of Texas Alumni who was planning on meeting in Regent's Park to picnic.

Walking through a local Sainsbury's, we grabbed the quintessential 4th of July goodies - any "American" food and drink we could get our hands on! We settled on Budweiser's, Oreo's and Doritos, then grabbed hot dogs and hamburgers from a nearby food truck. Google had informed us that the group of Texans was meeting somewhere in the park, but anyone who’s ever been to Regent's Park knows that it's not a small place; so we walked around scanning the horizon for our fellow patriots. After about twenty-five minutes of searching Megan spotted a backwards Texas hat... GAME ON!




The rest of the afternoon was spent in the park listening to Country music, eating, drinking and tossing around the old pigskin, a "real" American FOOTBALL! If you know your world History, the irony in all of this is that we were celebrating our independence from England, in the heart of central London! Although we didn't have fireworks, we have some great pictures and memories of our first, Fourth abroad.




As you all know we are in Tenerife right now, so yesterday was another fabulous Fourth away from the USA. Once again we did our research, looking and hoping to find a group of Americans meeting up somewhere on the island. Unfortunately we came up empty handed, and haven't been able to locate a single American in the eight days we've been here.

We decided the best way to celebrate our lonely 4th of July in Tenerife was to take some traditional American food down to the beach. Pacing the Supermercado in search of true "American" food was not easy - we once again found American beer, this time MGD's and Budweiser's, we also scored with a big juicy watermelon, Doritos, sunflower seeds, and the traditional BBQ foods - hot dogs and hamburgers! When we got back home we realized we had no access to a grill, so we made the hamburgers and hotdogs on our electric stovetop, packed up a picnic and headed to the beach. Soaking up the sunshine and munching on our American food brought big smiles to our faces. Despite being 5,300 miles from home we still managed to have a fantastic Fourth of July!






Xo,
M&K

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Header image:Arizona Roadtrip Sunset, By: Kyle Ledeboer
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