Easter in Beijing

Though far, far from home on Easter, we still mangaged to celebrate in style. First, Drew, Nate and I attended the 6:30 am mass at the Beijing cathedral (Drew and Nate are Catholic, I'm not, but it was still very cool). The mass was in Latin, though the congregation chanted and sang throughout the entire ceremony. This is apparently not the norm in Catholic masses. We assume that because most Chinese Catholics converted from Buddhism (which of course involves a lot of chanting) more chanting and singing is allowed and encouraged during the mass. Very interesting.

After mass we went shopping for eggs...

...hardboiled them...

...colored them...


...(with some musical accompaniment from Nate)...

...and had an Easter Egg hunt in the hostel courtyard! It was guys vs. girls, and though we talked some serious smack, we were soundly beaten, 24-17. Here are the victorious girls -- left to right, Christine from Germany, Emily from Texas, Natalie from I can't remember which state, Carrie and Shelley from Utah. Christine is traveling the world, Emily and Natalie just finished a stint in the Peace Corps in Thailand, and Carrie and Shelley are teaching English in China. (Peter is in the background for some unknown reason. He hid the eggs for us):

And here are the L-O-S-E-R-S! (Thanks to Emily for the photo) Why am I making a zero with my other hand? I'll tell you why. That's how many eggs I found. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. Not one of my finer moments, I'll tell you that:

Even though we lost, in humiliating fashion, it was still very good times. After that, we left for the train station and Tibet.