Thursday, January 15, 2009

Christmas caroling

I hardly know what to post from the holidays.  Should I even go back and try?  Here's one quickie, from just one event: caroling!  I did post that video.  Our evening was quite similar to that.  First we went around to the church babushki in the city at their apartments and randomly through part of the hospital.  Then we got in cars and went on a whirlwind tour of several villages.


A few of the youth before starting out

Jaan holds the star

Singing inside one of the village homes

Warming up at the end
(It was so cold that night!)


Christmas--and especially Christmas caroling--is very Ukrainian, not Russian. I always heard in Russia about how people go caroling in Ukraine. Now we've experienced that! As you know, we're in the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine. But that night we sang mostly in Ukrainian. A funny language story: One of the young guys from church was greeting everyone and giving a little speech in Ukrainian. I thought it was kind of funny, since I had never heard him speak Ukrainian before. At one home he started off, and the babushka stopped him, saying that she didn't understand Ukrainian. He answered, "Well, neither do I!"

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Good language story- very funny! That reminds me of Lilya's cousin's drunk husband, who didn't understand Russian when he was drunk. He thought I was speaking German and kept telling me he didn't speak German and I kept saying, "Neither do I!"

Baba Julie said...

Cute pictures! It gives us a good picture of what you did! Love y'all! Julie

Anonymous said...

That sounds like so much fun. I wish I could have gone with you.

e said...

So cool!! I just missed the caroling when I left before Christmas last year..I wish it WAS a tradition in Russia...