St. George's Day

As previously mentioned here, Ben and I added St. George's Day to our growing list of traditions we want to keep and follow.  We learned of St. George's Day from a Spanish friend.  He said that on said day you give the person you love a book and a single flower.  How wonderful! Since Ben and I both think that Valentine's Day is crap (you should show love to your spouse/significant other every day), and because we both LOVE to read, we penciled it in on the calendar.

Our sweet new reads and loverly flowers!

We decided to go to the book store together instead of purchasing a book beforehand.  We took about an hour looking through the books at Borders (for lack of a better option), and when we had made our decision on what to get the other we met at the cash register and showed each other our selections.  Ben chose When She Woke by Hillary Jordan, for me and I chose The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal, for him. Ben also grabbed a copy of Hamlet since we will be going to the American Players Theater this fall to see it.

After we selected our books we walked to Lime Tree which is one of our favorites here in Dubai.  They have delicious desserts, interesting eats and tasty smoothies and coffee.  I love, love, love going there for breakfast! We talked about our book selections and started to mentally prepare for our big move coming up.  

After finishing breakfast, we walked to the flower shop where we picked out two flowers to take home.  The guy working wrapped them up for us and we started quoting Love Actually between us and giggling because he was taking so long.  We didn't mind, though.

Our first St. George's Day was wonderful.  It isn't actually until the 23rd, so we celebrated a bit early.  We loved searching for a book for the other and taking time to slow down.  We are already looking forward to doing this again but will go to a used book store, if possible, to search for hidden treasures.  Pearl S. Buck is one of my favorite authors and I love finding old, old copies of her books.  Bonus if they still have a dust cover! Plus, older, used books have more character.  I blame our love for used book stores on our high school teacher, Mrs. Fahey.  :)   

Happy reading!