Valentine

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Honestly, I am not very fond of it. I feel it is very much commercially forced on us....toooo sweet, tooo pink, too unnatural. It makes me think of sticky overly sweet not yummie candies. But I always remember a funny episode of my student exchange in Canada.

In Belgium Valentine's day is the day of Love...meaning love between 2 lovers, not love as in parental love or the love for a friend. On Valentine's day in Canada I simply went to school not thinking about this holiday at all since I had no boyfriend, so as always, it was not a holiday that concerned me.

At the moment I entered the hallway, a friend (I think it was Rita) came to me and gave me a Valentine card. I was stunned and did not really know how to react. My gosh, did Rita fancy me? Was she a lesbian? What did I need to tell her? How could I tell her I was not in love with her?

I was standing there perplex but Rita didn't notice, she was busy checking the small pile of cards in her hand that she still had to distribute? What the hell...was she going to declare her love to many people at once?

This was still going on in my mind all very quickly when my host sister Julia ran to me. "Hi there, here is my Valentine card for you"...and she was gone already with a pile of cards in her hand as well.

Within 1 minute I had received 2 Valentine cards from female friends at school and I noticed that everywhere Valentine cards were being distributed. Either the school was full of bisexual non-monogamous relationships or I was simply confused by different cultural interpretations of Valentines day. Clearly in Canada Valentine was also celebrated among friends...Another lesson learned and since then I always have to smile about this memory on Valentines day. Those are by the way the only Valentine cards I have ever received in my life :p