picture post- 10 april

album update!

- carrying candles home in the rain on Thursday [Holy Thursday, Clean Thursday… the one before Good Friday]
- Because it’s spring, buy real plants and plant them! Because it’s Easter, buy fake flowers to decorate the graves of relatives.
- festive pysanky and pascha [Easter bread] decorations on Tam-Tam
- one of many mosaically decorated bus stops on the way to Lviv
- one of many lovely churches on the way to Lviv
- one of many Easter eggs, prepared here by Ivanna and daughter Iryna
- If the paschas are small enough, you can eat three by yourself!
- Mom/ Grandma Yaroslava helps to prepare baskets
- basket-blessing, and the church is surrounded by people and baskets
- iconostas inside, with “Christ is risen” letters in gold… in Ukrainian, clearly
- baskets
- blessing
- lots more baskets
- front of church
- inside another church
- same church, with me
- iconostas of this church
- mosaic icon
- flower-pysanky hanging in gate in front of old Polish castle, or church
- oldest church
- girls offering bread and welcome to traditional children’s Easter show
- forest animals help this poor little lost girl by bringing her a basket, as well as stuff for it… sort of the opposite of Little Red Riding Hood? J
- each item in the basket talks about why it’s most important—this one, the horseradish [krin], is related to me, so he wins J
- me there
- round and round and round in the circle dance
- inside this old church
- same
- family- Veronika, her mom Mariana, me, Mariana’s sister Anya, and their mom Nadia
- not the only stork nesting on an electric pole in the area
- Bohdan, Roman, and Hanna wave goodbye after packing me onto the marshrutka back to Lutsk
- just about every tree in a yard or on the street is painted solid white about three feet from the ground, but here along the road between towns, one stripe does the trick [both a spring Easter-cleaning and keeping-bugs-away tradition]
- Easter concert spectacular
- maypole and jump-roping as part of the same show
- drum corps in university concert… inside!