Celebrations!

27 April 27, 2009

While several other things have happened since my last post, the nearest and dearest to my heart occurred on April 24- I turned 21! Hooray! And a better birthday I couldn’t have asked for. First of all, the weather was perfectly cooperative, sunny and warm for the first time in a long time. (A few hours after I posted last, the weather in Yaroslavl took a sudden dive. For about 10 days it felt like January again. The best part is that the all-knowing people in charge of my apartment complex turned off the heat. Doing homework was miserable; I could barely feel my fingers. I felt as if I had never left the arctic. Only when I was there I was expecting it to be cold. If the weather hadn’t become more spring like when it did there could have been problems, since so many little old ladies live in the same complex as I do.) Back to happier subjects. I was awakened by a phone call from home, which was by far the best present of the day. Yay family! My Russian family helped make the day special as well. My friend Sasha (who is one of my favorite people in the world, and an exception to everything I grumble about Russians in general) dropped by my house with a huge bouquet of 21 balloons, chocolate, and a framed picture of the two of us. It was so unexpected and so wonderful that I nearly cried with happiness. Lyudmila Sergeevna made me a feast of блинчики, with a side of some cool Russian song books, and chocolate of course. (This is definitely the theme of this birthday. Decadence J ) The fun didn’t stop there, when I got to school that morning, not one but TWO birthday cakes awaited me. One was handmade by a classmate! I felt much loved. That evening, we all met up at a lovely Thai restaurant (which happens to be in the very same building as my house. Very convenient.) We wined and dined on champagne, wine and chocolate fondue. (I told you we were decadent. But don’t be alarmed, everything was very reasonably priced, much more so than back home.) It was a really fun gathering, the first time our whole group has been together since Sochi. I was even presented with a Putin matrioshka doll, as a gag gift. We all stayed at the café until closing, then headed to a nice club for some dancing. All in all, a most marvelous milestone for me.

What else? Russian Easter of course! Remember how I told you it was a frigid for a couple of weeks here? Well Orthodox Easter fell on the coldest of those days. I felt like it added to the whole experience, crunching through the snow in the middle of the night, wrapped in a shawl (women are not allowed to be bareheaded in orthodox churches) in the midst of a silent wood, towards the only light to be seen; that of the church tower. I am not sure how to describe the experience of welcoming Easter via that vigil. The whole thing seemed very surreal, and very very old, as if I had been transported back several hundred years. The service started off with everyone lighting candles in front of various icons for a variety of different reasons; health, the holiday, people that have died, all the holy saints. Then we made a candlelight procession around the church (the wind was so strong that all the candles blew out), and ended up back at the front door. There, the priest knocked on the door (at exactly midnight) and cried out «ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕС! » (Christ is risen) to which we replied «ВО ИСТИНУ ВОСКРЕСС! » (He is Risen indeed). This chant was repeated numerous times throughout the night. After that we all shuffled back into the church warm church, where we soon began to overheat due to the number of people, candles, and incense. It got to be too much for me, and I had to go back outside to keep from fainting. I would rather freeze my butt off then pass out again. I seem to do that a lot here.
Now, I appreciate people’s rights to have ancient traditions as much as the next person, but I felt decidedly uncomfortable with the goings on in this service. First of all, with all the icons and candles it felt downright pagan. I literally felt like I was back in Mongolia, in a Buddhist temple or something.