Christmas and New Year’s Update

Well it is officially the New Year here in Ukraine. After celebrating our Western Christmas on the 25th of December and ringing in the New Year in the early hours of January 1st. As most of you know we also got to celebrate their “Orthodox” Christmas here on the 7th of January. Also they have what they call “The Old New Year’ which is on the 14th of January. We now believe we have covered every ones idea of when the New Year begins.

Never have we seen so many fireworks in such a short amount of time. The biggest display was the New Years celebration. If we didn’t know better we would have thought that the beginning of WWIII had begun in our region. Fireworks are cheap and easily available and from what we can tell not regulated whatsoever. Things were booming so loud and close and flashing from every direction if we had guns we might have got them out just in case. Of course I am kidding but it was a totally different experience than what we are used to. 4th of July celebrations have always taken place at my Uncle’s place and we do pretty much what we want there with fireworks, but this was on such an unbelievably grand scale it is hard to describe here but I think you get the idea.

Our Christmas was somewhat lonely for us as this was our first time away from our families and all things familiar for the holidays. We were surrounded by our good friends and we threw our own Western Christmas Eve party which was fun for us and those that came. We didn’t even realize we hadn’t heard any Christmas music till the Sunday of their Orthodox Christmas which was on the 7th of January. They played Silent Nite in Russian and it actually brought tears to our eyes. At “home” in Ohio I David actually get very tired of all the Christmas music but this year I didn’t realize I was missing it till I heard it again.