Lavra: A Day In A Monastery

February 27, 2011
This week was a pretty stressful one for me. I was super nervous because of 3 things: 1. I was teaching Kitchen and Games for the first time 2. The parents were going to be watching us teach 3. I was going to be making pudding for the first time.  These may not seem that stressful but believe me they were. I could hardly eat or sleep. However, those days actually went pretty smooth. The parents weren't quite as intimidating as I thought they would be. They just sat in the back of class and watched. For the most part I think having the parents there helped the kids behave better! That was a nice change for some of the rowdy kids. I even was able to make pudding and not mess up thanks to the help of Natalie and her amazing 'whisking' skills. The kids even enjoyed the crafts! The theme for this week was pirates. On Wednesday we made pirate ships. We had a hot dog be the ship and the sails were pretzels and then we put gold fish around the boat and attached a pirate flag! I was pretty impressed with how they turned out. Then on Thursday we made crocodile swamps. We used a banana as the crocodile body and then put M&M's on the top as eyes, used pretzels as legs, and graham crackers as the bumps on the crocodiles back. We then added the pudding around the crocodile as the 'swamp'. The kids really enjoyed this activity. 
They kept saying 'one more crocodile, more swamp!' It was pretty cute =) I was pretty nervous with having the parents watch the lesson that I didn't take pictures of the finished project... This week I'll definitely take pictures of the food we make! As for the rest of the week it was pretty much a breeze. On Friday, after we finished teaching, a few of us headed over to ASHAN.  It is pretty much a Ukrainian Costco. It has EVERYTHING, except free samples =) We explored around there a bit and then headed home. It was nice to finally sleep at my house on a Friday night instead of at the school. On Saturday we all met up to go to the Lavra. A Lavra is a senior monastery and some priests dug out a bunch of caves for living, worshiping, and studying. When they died their bodies were naturally preserved in the caves. They're still there today, and for the Church it's confirmation that these men were holy. Above ground, they built the Dormition Cathedral. Our coordinator Tanya took us through the caves.  It was interesting to walk through and see this underground place they spent their lives. A little odd, but definitely interesting. We were given candles before we headed down since there isn't any electricity below and then we walked through a maze of preserved bodies in caskets. After that we headed back up and Tanya showed us around the grounds.  We took some pictures, made snow angels (because Rockie had never made one) and then headed into a museum. Tanya told us we could sing a few songs if we wanted. So we sang Silent Night, As Sister's In Zion, and The Spirit of God. It sounded pretty neat.  When we finished the lady who lets people into the museum came up to us and told Tanya since we sang so beautifully it touched her and we were allowed to take pictures. So that was pretty neat! Unfortunately my camera was dead... so no pictures.  After that we headed to the bell tower and listened to it chime and then we went inside the Dormition Cathedral and listened to some of the meeting. It was a lot of singing/chatting. We only stayed for about 5 minutes then left. It was ... interesting :P Afterwards we headed over to a little cafe and had some hot chocolate and then headed home. The weather has been FREEZING here! I cannot wait for spring to come! This weekend we are going on our first vacation! We are taking a night train over to L'viv and staying there from Saturday to Wednesday! It will be pretty exciting =)