Aysha and Sunil do a Blog Post

Today is the start of the Meskel holidays at school.   We get a lot of holidays, because we get to celebrate the Orthodox Ethiopian holidays, Muslim holidays, Christian holidays and random holidays.

This is the legend we learned at school.  Empress Helen was looking for the cross that Jesus was nailed to.   She looked and looked and couldn’t find it.  Then she lit a fire and the smoke pointed to a hill in Isreal.  She traveled to the hill and her people started digging for a really long time.   Then luckily they found the cross on March 10^th (we're not sure why Meskel is celebrated in September).   The cross was split into four pieces.  Now Ethiopia, Egypt and two other countries have a piece of the cross.

lighting the bonfire

Today at school we had a huge bonfire with a cross on top.  It was bigger than any bonfire you would ever see at a Canadian school.  Most people wore traditional Ethiopian clothes.   We only had ½ a day of school and have the rest of the week off, so that is really good.

As always, popcorn for all

traditional clothing