Greek Easter

Australia is home to the 5th largest Greek population in the world (number 1 being Greece).  When you consider that Australia is home to only 22 million people, that is a huge number, and the hot spot of all of this Greek-ness is Melbourne.  There is no little Italy here, only China town and the Greek precinct.

One of my closest friends here is also an American exchange student, by heritage a mix of Greek and Mexican.  Through some long convoluted process of her professor at home giving her a phone number of another student who was also Greek she somehow became friends with a Greek girl who lives in the Melbourne area, and through a series of random encounters and friendships, I found myself last night at a midnight service at a Greek Orthodox church with a Greek family I did not know, my Greek friend and 3 other people from New Zealand.  We waited outside the church with a large crowd of Greeks of all ages until midnight when the lights of the church were turned off and all the people inside came outside with their lit candles followed by the priest with the icons of that church.  The flame was passed around to all those standing outside and after a short address in English, the priest started singing in Greek.  At times people joined in, and it ended with everyone greeting each other "Kristos anesti!  Alithos anesti!"  In English, "Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!"  It was such a wonderful moment for me when this happened.  After a service in a language that I did not understand at all, all of a sudden I was using this dearly familiar greeting to celebrate with people I had never met, albeit in a different language.  We were invited to spend the night, but we declined the offer and tramed back to our dorm on the last tram of the night.

The next day (today) though was when the real celebration happened.  Around 1:00 we arrived back at the house for the BBQ.  There are lots of stereotypes for large Greek gatherings, but I was still floored by the size of the spread in front of us.  I think I'm lucky that I did not pop from eating too much today.  It was all so delicious!  The meats, salads, pastries, desserts...all of it was delicious so I had to try all of it, and the food kept coming too.  Fortunately the university aged students had our own table to the corner slightly away from the parents' table, otherwise I think I wouldn't have been able to get away with having an empty plate after my 3rd round...I probably would have needed to keep going.  It was quite amusing too that when we went to leave, the mom asked us to take some leftovers, so we each took a plastic bowl and filled it up with food, piling stuff on top of each other.  She protested that we would never be able to take enough food in such small bowls!  We needed to take a real plate and proceeded to hand us two of the dinner plates we had been using (diameter well over a foot) and ordered us to fill it.  We protested that we couldn't take real plates because we had no way to return them, so she conceded and washed a larger plastic plate for us.  After filling that with desserts she also handed us a second plate full of desserts which we declined because of the already massive amounts of food we were taking home.  She seemed to accept that, however when the other plate made its way into a grocery bag, somehow that second plate still managed to join it.  Somehow during this process I also managed to get a loaf of bread stuck in my shoulder bag.  We managed to leave with only the next 4 days worth of meals.  It could have easily doubled if we had stayed a minute longer.

So this Easter was full of new people, new foods, and new traditions.  There was a lot I miss though, like my family, my dog, my mother's cheesy beans, and the glorious hymns that make an appearance once a year at Easter.  The church I've been frequenting Sunday evenings is not so into traditional hymns, but I was half hoping that they would make an exception for "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" or "Up from the Grave He Arose".  Turns out that they didn't, so I'll have to wait another year for those ones, but I can't really say that detracted from the day as a whole.  And the food in the fridge should last for a while, so I'm safe from IH food for at least another week.  Benefits upon benefits, so I'll conclude by just stating, today was a really awesome day and I'm so thankful to be here in Melbourne, and so so thankful that we have Easter to celebrate.  2000 years ago Christ rose from the dead, which makes this day incredible to begin with, however good food, good company, and good weather combined to give the temporary happiness on top of that deeper joy to make today simply a beautiful beautiful day.