Easter

You may think this is a little late, but actually we just had Easter this weekend here in Greece because they celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. So, lots of Oresti's family came into town. Luli is just crazy about lots of his relatives so Saturday, we left her with them in the morning while Oresti and I ran a few errands. We came back and I was walking back to the kitchen, and quickly peeked into one of the rooms and saw what looked like Luli curled up on the floor under a blanket (because when she's tired they often just lay her on the floor). But I thought it was a little strange that they hadn't put down a blanket underneath her (its a hard marble floor).
THANKFULLY I didn't peek under the blanket to check on her, otherwise I would have gotten the shock of my life to be staring into the face of a lamb on a spit with his poor little tongue sticking out! (I guess he was also taking a nap before his big day).
So, Luli was actually in the other bedroom taking a nap with her cousin Andri.

Sunday was kind of rainy so we all stayed inside Oresti's parents house. For those of you who don't realize how small Greek apartments are, just know they're really small rooms. And, we had over 20 people there. But surprisingly to me, it didn't seem so crowded (I guess I've gotten used to this). We even cleared out half of the tables after we were done eating and did some dancing (there were relatives there who brought their instruments!). Oh we had so much fun! And Luli loved all the dancing, she even had her first crowd surfing experience:) I didn't get any pictures because I was busy getting video, so sorry about that.

But here's a picture of most of the people in the morning just before they all left.






















Then here's some pictures from Saturday night. People of the Orthodox church gather at midnight at all the churches with their candles and wait for the "Holy" candle to be passed around while the priests sing, and then at midnight they all greet eachother with "Christ has risen!" Then they all try to make it back to their homes without letting the candle blow out and they burn a cross just above their front door. I've never gotten to see this in the 3 years I've been here for Easter, so this year Oresti and I finally made it out.






















Another interesting thing I saw this past week was a priest blessing a car! There was a guy standing with a priest next to this car with the hood open. I asked Oresti about it and he said, oh yeah, they do that all the time when someone gets a new car, the priest blesses it so it hopefully won't have any problems. I looked around after we passed them and saw a vase of holy water sitting on the engine:)