For Easter, my host family and I attended their church service at 11 pm, and it did not end until 1 am. The parishioners sang several different songs and they performed different rituals. Then, we came home and slept. Later, my host mom made a large Easter feast. She made cozonac bread, which is a popular Romanian Easter dish. My host family is Romanian, so they had all kinds of different Romanian dishes.
I learned about Easter and how they celebrate it. I learned that it is very important to decorate for Easter, and they like colorful Easter eggs. They like hand painted eggs or even beaded eggs, however, which are a little different from our tie dyed eggs. People put lots of time into painting or even placing the beads on the eggs. My family had hand-beaded eggs that they brought with them whenever they came here from Romania because they were that special to them.
It is for the same reason Americans celebrate Easter, which is for the resurrection of Jesus - they just celebrate it on a different day. New Zealanders actually celebrate the day on the same day as Americans, but Romanians celebrate it two weeks later.
