Eastern celebration in Anchupani

On 22nd of April we with JACis used the first day of work in the best way possible - celebrating Eastern. JACis, JACis volunteers, international and local and around 15 youngsters went to celebrate the holly day in Anchupani - a beautiful place near Rezekne. There we spent more than four hours - coloring eggs, learning about Eastern and different Eastern traditions and of course having fun.

The eggs were colored in a traditional Latvian way - with onion peelings and with different leaves for decoration. Everybody took part in the action and the result was more than good.







The eggs looked beautiful. I'm sure that seeing this result a person like me, who never colored eggs this way, will surelly want to try this technic next Eastern.

Other than eggs we did pretty good job at finding the 50 chocolate eggs hidden, by the 'Eastern bunny', in the near woody area. They were hidden all around the woods with three Eastern bunnies.

After all the excitement we finally were able to sit down, look at the done work and talk a littbe bit about the meaning of Eastern.


 
Father Aleksey explained about the meaning of the red eggs and why we give them to each other:
He said that on that day years after the Christ resurge Virgin Mary gave a plain white egg to one Roman magistrate with the words "God resurged". The magistrate laughed at her and said "People can't resurged as this plain white egg can't become white". In this moment the egg in his hands became red. 

On the same note but other hand in Bulgaria where we celebrate Eastern not only with red eggs but with sweet bread as well, called Kozunak, we believe that the eggs symbolize the Christ's blood and the bread- his flesh as whine and breat symbolize them in the Eucharist during the other time of year.

The experience in Anchupani was truly very fun. For this helped the great sunny weather which permited us to play different games: from

football, 












to badminton, 











volleyball, 













rope jumping, 











novus,






 

freezby, 

different team building games












and ending with walking on a rope, for the first time for many of us.

We will surely remember this day and want to do it again.

 The whole event ended with one foreigner tradition, polish and slovakian - sprinkling with water. All the girls were pretty shocked at first giving that the boys didn't tell us anything about this. After awhile we catch the game however and even started to get them back.

 All in all Anchupani was one great, funny and educational day on which everybody had a lot of fun. We were glad we could spent a sunny warm day like this, even the sprinkling of the water or the short rain couldn't bother us too much. It will be one great memory from JACis.