Thanks, Christ

A year ago, I celebrated Easter with Sorinescu at a Romanian church in LA. Well, celebrated isn't really the right word--I think I complained most of the time about being cold. But back then, I learned this little exchange you're supposed to have on Easter (which I think I am spelling and/or translating incorrectly-Sorinescu please correct if so):

-Hristos a inviat! (Christ has risen!)--(Thanks for correction, S.)
to which you respond:
-Adevarat, a inviat! (True, he has risen!)

I am not so sure it's true at all--the Christ being alive part--but I'm willing to humor Romanians on their special day. However, I hadn't had the chance to say it for a whole year, so when a neighbor in my apartment building greeted me with "Hristos a inviat!" it took me by surprise and all I managed to say was "Multumesc!" (Thanks!)

I assume she heard my accent and realized I was just an idiot foreigner--an amusing anecdote to recount during the family's Easter meal.

Later that day, Nikki and I took a very nice stroll through Herestrau Park, where Nikki took pictures of the spring flowers and the red plastic egg-balloons that were hung throughout the park. The red eggs are an important part of the Romanian Orthodox Easter celebration; they symbolize the blood-soaked eggs supposedly lain under the cross when Christ was dying. They've got the chocolate bunnies too, but Easter here is a serious affair, more about religion and ritual than in the US, where the capitalist enterprise has made it mostly about marshmallow Peeps and plastic grass.