Easter Saturday

We began Saturday at Brent's+Melissa (a student here+his wife). They cooked for us an English breakfast which we all enjoyed. Jon particularly enjoyed it as they'd cooked fish fingers as well as eggs (as he's a vegetarian who eats fish)! We arrived for 10+ate at gone 11. We then chatted for a long time +left sometime before 2. It was a wonderful morning+nice to spend some more time with Brent+Melissa. We also compared the S.A.+English cultures, talking about things such as the education system, people's temperaments,+the royal family among other things! I found this fascinating as there are many things I take for granted+assume everyone does only to find out since being here that people in different cultures don't know about them+ think they sound really weird. E.G.The fact that we move the clocks an hour forwards +then backwards twice a year!!


Despite this lovely morning,the Saturday still felt like a day of waiting around,as this Saturday (after Good Friday+before Easter Sunday) always does to me at home. This was no different then,until a service we had at 7pm which started,as usual for such services,outside with a small fire being lit.This years Paschal Candle was lit from this fire. Well I say this years, but actually it said '1999' on it before Fungayi creatively changed it to '2010'! We then went in the chapel+each persons small candle was lit. There were many readings at the beginning +all of these were read by spouses of students+staff here at COTT. All spouses here are female so this meant for the first time hearing more females voices throughout a service than male and for me it was a V. welcome+pleasant thing indeed -especially since the night before I'd been in a situation where male+female segregation +gender stereotyping was rife in a way which I thought was basically oppression -i.e. at a party on Good Friday evening at Fr.Isias's (there's always a party/gathering on Good Friday in S.A. as they celebrate the whole day as if it's a funeral) I was asked to sit in one room with the women while the men were in another.

Next in the service we renewed our Baptismal Vows which for me felt particularly special on this occasion. And Fungayi used a conifer branch to soak us with the water which I liked! After this was the Eucharist.
All in all I felt,like several other students here,that the service was misplaced as we were celebrating Christ's resurrection before Easter Sunday had begun.