Holidays

Thanksgiving for me was well spent with about 15 other volunteers in a city in south/central Ukraine. We actually celebrated on Saturday instead of Thursday, and there were few differences from the holiday at home. We watched football, played football, went shopping, cooked tons of food, then became catatonic afterwards. Of course there were differences. We went shopping at thrift stores, played football in a sketchy paved lot behind a school at dusk (3pm), watched a recorded Jets vs. Patriots game, cooked chicken instead of turkey, and nearly passed out at a sauna instead of on the couch. I loved the Ukrainian flavor it had, and had great company. Sure did miss home though. At least I got to Skype with the whole family on Thanksgiving Day.

Christmas is going to be weird. Ukraine celebrates Christmas on the Orthodox 'Old Calendar' which means they will celebrate actual Christmas on Jan. 7. Thanks to Soviet influence, they will do the whole Santa Claus thing on New Years Eve, which is their big celebration. Which means Dec. 25 is just another day here. It was weird enough forgetting about Thanksgiving on it's actual day, but missing Christmas is a different story. My family, friends, and country are going to be celebrating and I'll be working at school, with nobody acknowledging there is anything special about the day. Going to do my best to make sure I'm around friends who understand at least for a bit on Christmas day.

For New Years I'm going to be in Prague, living it up with my bro Austin Foster, giving him some much needed respite from Catholic seminary. I'll arrive in Prague on Dec. 29, meet up with Foster, then head down to Munich on Jan. 2, parting ways on the 5th. The goal is to be in a different city for New Years Eve every year. We've done New Orleans, New York, and now Prague. It will be interesting to see where we end up next.

It's gonna stink not celebrating Christmas like usual, but the upside is I will get back to Ukraine in time to celebrate Christmas with my friends on Jan. 7. There are already some plans in the works for that. So at least there's the potential to celebrate Christmas twice!