Rounds Of Whiskey x (Blessed Bread + Meat Jell-o) = Easter

Today is Easter. This is a pretty huge holiday in Ukraine. People started going to church last night and others got up as early as 3am this morning to hit the services. Everyone either buys or bakes an Easter bread which they need to take to church to get blessed before eating. Tanya got up early and was out the door at 6:00am to make the services. We were invited to Pavil’s apartment for the Easter feast and sat down to eat around 10:00am [some of my clustermates started as early as 8am]. This was mostly analogous to a Thanksgiving dinner with the addition of many rounds of alcohol shots. Again, the bottle says “коняак” [cognac], but the content screams whiskey. The centerpiece of the table is a plate with the blessed bread surrounded by decorated hardboiled eggs. Everyone takes one egg and you hold it in your hand and you tap the top of someone else’s egg. One of the shells will crack and the other one won’t. I think the object is to crack yours and then crack your friends with the other end of yours. Sometimes the same egg gets cracked on both ends which I guess is like pulling the winning side of a wishbone, but I did not fully understand the entire ritual’s subtleties. Otherwise, the food was just a lot of the same food that I have been getting regularly; salads, fried meats, and pepperoni, etc. This was the first time I got “meat Jell-o”, which is something I have been hearing about (and not in a nice way) since I got here. I figured I would run across it at one time or another. It wasn’t as bad as I had built it up to be. It was more like a cold chicken soup with gelatin in it to hold it together. I was able to slice off some of the bigger chunks of gelatin to move to the side of my plate. The chicken was good, just cold. I did pass on the plate of liver salad that was on the table though. I was good with where I was and was able to keep up with the family’s liquor shot intake. At one point, Pavil pulled out the vodka which was a bit strong. Luckily, there was only one round of that. The “dinner” was done by noon and we did not need to eat any more for the rest of the day. Here’s to more feasts of good food in this country…on second thought, if it is all the same, maybe I’ll just toast with a glass of juice this time around.