Happy Easter!

Kiev is considered somewhat of a center for orthodox Catholicism in Eastern Europe. There are elaborate beautiful churches on nearly every corner. As I oooed and ahhhed over yet another church, our local friend and guide sarcastically commented "welcome to Kiev." We have been walking all over the city since we got here but yesterday was really interesting since it was the day before Easter and Easter is a pretty big deal here. As we entered each church people were gathered with baskets of eggs and traditional Easter cakes waiting for their holiday treats to be blessed by the priest. The priest would walk through the crowd covering them with droplets of holy water.

We must have seen a total of five churches yesterday, one of which was a monestary and housed priests' tombs in a dark underground cave. I am not a very religious person, but the Ukrainian's devotion to the Catholic Church was stunning as they dove to kiss the glass tombs holding the priests' remains. At each church we entered women were expected to cover their head in respect, thankfully I happened to bring a scarf from home that worked perfectly.


Last night, as the exhausted adults headed back to the flat, Kristina (a 19 year old from Belarus, who is a part of the Children of Chernobyl group) and I stayed out. It was a Saturday night and the city center was packed with people. We could have gone to a bar or a club, but instead we went on a little adventure to buy some Easter presents of our own. At a local grocery store we purchased the traditional Easter cakes, one for us and two as gifts. We looked around for the closest church, which wasn't very hard to find, and waited with hundreds of other people who were attending the all-night Easter service. The crowd was spilling onto the street. I couldn't see much or understand any of the languages that the service was in (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and French) but as the priest walked through the crowd sprinkling holy water, we made sure our Easter treats got in on the action. We later came home and colored some Easter eggs of our own. Kristina told me about the Easter traditions in her family-on Easter morning the family washes their face by rubbing the colored eggs on their skin (I am not really clear on the significance) and then the children then play this game where each person holds an egg and knocks them together until one breaks. The person holding the broken eggs is the looser.


Even though I am not very religious at all, it has been so interesting learning the traditions of Easter in Ukraine. Today we are leaving Ukraine and flying to Belarus where we will be meeting up with the rest of our group and will finally get to visit the Rudensk Orphanage and complete the charity work we came all this way for. Hope everyone is having a very happy Easter back in the States.