Linksmu Velykų

So far, here's how the jobs/volunteer positions are panning out. 3 days of the week have been set aside for 3 separate high schools, most of which will be volunteer except for 2 hours one week when I will do an after-school activity in English for the students of one high school. I went to talk with the faculty of the university with my cousin and both the faculty and the students are interested in receiving English classes. If they say yes, they would be paying me. I have not heard back from them though as it has been Holy week and vacations.

On Good Friday, I went to church at noon, but found no service. I later found out that it is normally held at 3pm, unlike in the US.

Easter started out early with a packed 7AM mass and a procession outside. I was just happy we could squeeze in because it was cold outside-0 C. Of course I was told otherwise that it really was not cold. Mass was so packed that they had communion service afterwards in which only half the people stayed. We then walked over to my cousin's husband's mother to what would begin a day with tons of eating and drinking. The breakfast was mostly cold, which would be the theme for the entire day. It included cured fish with onions, meat blended with nuts with plum sauce in the center, jellied chicken, hot cooked chicken legs, horse radish, bread, tea, sweets, and homemade liquor. We also did a competition of boiled eggs in which each person picks one egg and then faces another person by smacking his egg with the other person's egg. The winner is the one whose egg does not break. We competed using both sides of the egg and I won both times! Then we returned home to some homemade ice cream and Russian Orthodox Easter cake (this was a special date because this year the Catholic Easter and Orthodox Easter were the same day), which was very heavy and gritty and had candied fruit in it. Then we went down to the same neighbor who made the cake and of course we had to eat more. The menu included cold duck cooked with apples, cold chicken, a specialty Russian cold meat, a type of sea fish prepared only with sugar and salt, a dish of shredded beets with pistachios and plums, oven-baked milk, cold cooked fish, fruits, and more homemade liquor. I was only noon when we got done and had had so much, which is why I took a nice nap before going to the farm (I am sure the shots of homemade liquor helped).
At the farm, there was more excellent food. There were bandukes, more cured fish with onions, cake, homemade candies, breaded fish, fish in a type of slaw, onion rings, a type of radish, horse radish sauce, potatoes, breaded mushrooms from the farm which they grow to export to other countries, and brandy and vodka. I ate just about as much as I could until we started our next egg competition in which we rolled boiled eggs down a ramp onto the ground. The object was to try to roll your egg into someone else so to capture his egg. After an hour, we stopped. I started with 3 eggs and ended with 8. I guess I have been having a lot of beginner's luck. With that, Easter was finished and we went home to rest the next day and prepare for the coming work in the high schools.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I also got to decorate some eggs for Easter with a neighbor. Here, she's showing me how to make intricate designs on the eggs using the hot wax you see in the lid on the stove and a tiny nail stuck into an eraser of a pencil.


The beginning of the procession at Easter morning massThe end of the procession with the Holy Eucharist.





My first of 3 mealsI chose the egg with the heart stain and won with both ends of the egg.I forgot to mention the cured string beans were also apart of the cuisine which you can see in this picture.Russian Orthodox Easter cake.Homemade ice cream with chocolate and pistachios
The 2nd egg competition. This one had a lot more strategy than the first.


My 3rd and thankfully last meal for the day. I know it does not look like that much, but really, it was a lot.
Ignas!

These movies below are not meant to be watched as they only show my feet, except for 10 seconds in the second video in which they show a glimpse of the cathedral in town. I wanted to record some of the Easter music while in mass but did not really have a good opportunity nor think it was right to record something properly. So, just click it and then go to your emails or something. The first song is something I recognized from my home parish, something that they sing also during communion.