Easter

Sunday was Easter in the village and Russian Easter has some pretty neat traditions.  They have a very strict lent for the 40 days before Easter restricting a lot of foods and many activities such as music.  The week before Easter, church is held every morning so we had several students who came into school around lunch time all last week and had almost no one on Good Friday.  Then they have church in the morning, break for lunch, and start back up in the afternoon.  For Easter day they start with church somewhere around 11:00pm on Saturday and it lasts until around 4:00am, which is pretty long when you realize they don't sit down at all during the service and I don't think they have chairs for anyone who might try to cheat.  When the service is over everyone walks around the church and says "Christ is Risen!" in three languages (I would specify what languages, but I don't know so I can't).

I already talked about making, blessing, and exchanging Easter bread, but they also dye Easter eggs which they have blessed and exchange as well.  The eggs they exchange are supposed to be red to represent the blood of Christ and they'll kiss the egg before they trade them.  To exchange an Easter egg with someone is to tell them that you would sacrifice your life for them like Christ did for us.  They usually play Aleut baseball on the runway on Easter day, but I didn't see them out there so I don't know if they did this year.  I don't know all of the specific details about Aleut baseball, but I don't think there are a set number of innings and I'm pretty sure they don't keep score and there are no outs so it can last a very long time.  Most of the kids really enjoy Easter because they get to ring the church bells throughout the day for three days.  Also for three days no one is allowed to knock before entering someone else's home - something else the kids really seem to enjoy.  It has something to do with Jesus knocking, but again the details were vague and I can't share what I do not know.  Yesterday was the last day for bell ringing and the no knocking rule so I'm assuming most of the Easter celebration is over.  I am sure, however, that many are still enjoying a lot of the tasty foods and fun activities they've not been allowed to have for the past several weeks.