Last post for awhile

So with a lot of upcoming traveling and not knowing how good internet access will be, this will most likely be my last post for awhile, at least a couple weeks. SO.....I leave you with this... Our neighbors are AWESOME, as I have said before and for Christmas they gave us gifts. One such gift is called a Topi. It actually has a longer name, but I can't remember the full name. Topi means hat in hindi. One of our Aunties made us HATS!!! AMAZING! As I may have said before I don't really know what's fashionable anymore, but I REALLY like our hats, we have worn them quite a lot and will definitely be sporting them when we go North over the next couple of days for Christmas! I even wear it to bed! The two tassle things can either be tied in front or behdind, notice April modeling the "behind" look!

Hope you all have a GREAT Christmas with great gifts like Topis and other fun presents!

Christmas Gifts (Ode to Sensei)

I have been thinking about my Sensei a lot recently. Partly because he is a wise person, but also because there seem to be a lot of really neat things happening at his new school. Not only is he expecting, ok so not him personally but his wife Chikako, congratulations, but his school is growing- woohoo! YEAY for Tae Kwon Do. If you would like more info on South Miami Martial Arts you can go here to the link on the side >>>>>>>
In the meantime, here is a picture of a gift I received for Christmas. Actually April and I both got them, but we traded because this one looks like he's doing some kind of martial arts, where as the other one looked like he was playing golf or something. All the other pictures are of me trying to mimic this asian ninja. I don't think I ever quite got the pose and by the time I was done I felt like my right butt cheek was about to fall off. Although I don't think I've forgotten my TKD, the fact that about 2 minutes of squatting like a ninja put my glutes into spasm, I think is an indication I need to be working out more! Pilates obviously isn't doing the trick.

Let's Partaaay.

I am convinced that we have the best, and funnest neighbors in the world. We wrote invitations and told them all to come at 3pm on Sunday. We were expecting up to 20 people if everyone showed up. The party started early, which never really happens here. We invited the kids over early to help us decorate and ice sugar cookies. It turned into a race to see who could decorate the most in the shortest amount of time. Apri's Momma sent us some fun cookie cutters, including a very proud Texas- shaped one. April took greta pride in creating edible treats in the shape of the Lone Star State. To make me feel better she also tried to cut out something that kind of resembled the state of Florida. I will post pictures later....
The guests started arriving at around 3pm. We started playing Punjabi music, because they didn't know how to dance to Christmas music. April and I were a little concerned that we didn't have enough things to do to keep our guests occupied, however, between the music, dancing and of course knitting (no cool south Asian party is complete without knitting) they kept themselves pretty occupied. I wish I had captured the dancing better, two of our Aunties were joking around and dancing and our Auntie (Mama ji) and myself, just busted out laughing. Sometimes when I laugh I kind of squeek, this was one of those times. Soon they were no longer laughing at the dancing, but at the white girl squeeking!
After the dancing died down we decided to give them some food, we started with the apple cider- a total FLOP. Who would have thought that warm apple juice with cinnamon would be a no go!? Luckily the sugar cookies and cheese dip were a success and I think our cider failure was soon forgotten.
Then came time for the Christmas story...again April's mom sent us an interactive nativity set, so we told the story of Christmas and a friend read about it in Hindi. After the story, we gave them their preents. I think they really liked them, and they gave us presents too. I kind of felt a little bad because I think they may have felt obliged to give us things, but we got some fun gifts....again I will post pictures later. After the dancing, knitting, story telling, eating, and gift giving, everyone parted ways and the clean up started. I haev to say I was a little concerned that the party would be a flop, but then again with our crazy neighbors and a little music it's enough enjoyment for everyone!

Funny moments

One of my favorite Aunties is a big joker. She likes to crack jokes and laugh a lot. She came into our room yesterday and was picking up random things joking around. She picked up my guitar and was pretending to play it while walking out the door, then she picked up certain undergarments of mine and pretended to wear them.
She is a HOOT. She then found my slippers that my best friend had given me, and started walking around dancing in them. Here are a couple of pictures of her modeling my slippers.

While we're on the subject of my slippers...since I have pulled them out for winter, everyone has been a little fascinated with them. When people come to our house they take off their shoes, some people will then have house shoes that they wear inside, and some will go barefoot. I don't like to go barefoot, so I wear house shoes, slippers etc. Well I'm guessing that slippers are a new thing to these parts, since because everyone always tries them on and then says "oh it's like walking on clouds" or something to that effect. They are ALWAYS everyone's favourite house shoe to wear when they come over. Yesterday we had some unexpected guests, who wanted their pictures taken with us......notice the common thread in ALL these pictures? YES- my light green, fluffy, 'Old Navy' slippers.

Before and After

This is our balcony before the wedding...notice the empty clean space...

This is our balcony during the wedding....notice the many people....

This is our balcony after the wedding.....

How many weddings have you had...In Your HOUSE!?

We were originally asked if the women of the Groom could stay in our house the night of the wedding. Of course we said yes and started planning on having lots of women staying in our house. So the day before the wedding, the tent goes up and some of the food arrives. I start to get a little concerned when the tent started being erected on our porch, but then I figured our porch was an extension of the roof so I tried to ignore it. The next morning I was rudely interrupted at around 5:30am to the sound of banging and shouting on our roof. I walked into our living room to find the bride and the Pundit (priest) performing the bridal ceremony. After a few minutes I walked back outside to find more people on our porch putting up more decoration. (Picture: Bride sitting on my bed. Obvisouly the best place for bridal pictures) then slowly slowly more and more people start to arrive. At this point I'm a little concerned and confused as to what is going on. Then, the only thing I can describe is some kind of organized chaos. Our Uncle has said the Groom's side of the family were going to be staying at our house, what I soon realise though is that the Bride's side of the family is having the wedding IN our house. As in not on the roof, not in our Uncle's house, but it OUR house. Due to a little miscommunication we found out that our Uncle and tried to tell us, they were having the wedding in our house, it's only a shame we only found out about it when it was actually happening. It was more like everyone else knew what was going on except us.
We have been witnesses to many weddings over the past 10months or so, but this is the first wedding we have personally hosted. We mingled and tried to be good hotesses, but we didn't really know what was expected of us, so we ended up just sitting and talking with people. The food was prepared upstairs on the roof, in the cow's old house, and the ceremony was held in our house. The bride and her side of the family do a ceremony before the groom arrives, then there's a ceremony with both sides and then the groom takes his bride back to his house. Before the Groom's side arrived we all ate and headed inside because it started to rain. The Groom's side sat on the roof, and watched the couple's ceremony from there, while the Bride's side watched from our house. The Bride and Groom meet with the Hindu Pundits and the quite lengthy ceremony began. The only thing I can say about the ceremony is that there was lots of water pouring and flower throwing. Then the bride and groom circle round the fire 7 times. This is to ensure that the Bride has the same husband for the next seven lives. After the ceremony, everyone eats and then after some time the Bride and Groom leave. Around 11pm April and I snuck into our room and tried to get some rest. Despite the trumpets and horns in the band I was able to sleep some, and the next morning the cleaning started! PHEUW! It was a lot of fun, despite the cold and the rain, and mess. It was quite an experience, and I doubt many other people have had the opportunity to house their own National Wedding.

It continues...

Being sick is part of living overseas. This is something I have become accustomed to, however, it seems as though I've been "cold" sick more than normal. I have my theories as to why, one of which includes big South Asian superbug viruses, that my puney US immune system can't tackle. I've been stuck inside the past few days WAY more than I would like, sleeping, reading etc etc. I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music, and old time Jazz. For some reason Nat Kind Cole, and Frank Sinatra remind me of Christmas. All this to say, because I've been under the weather recently I haven't done too much, making for pretty boring blogs. Last week April found out it was one of our friend's Birthdays. We have been meaning to make him cookies for a long time, but never got round to it, so April made some chocolate chip cookies for him. The recipe she used made millions so we had to come up with other ideas to distribute them, since all our immediate family and neighbors are Pure-Veg, meaning they don't even eat eggs. We decided to wrap some up and take them to our friends the Rickshaw wallas. We had discussed with them earlier how we give gifts around Christmas time, and they told us to make them American food. So on our way to the market we stopped off by the rickshaw guys to give them their cookies. They looked a little confused, but accepted the gifts and we went on our way.

Psyche you/Psyche me?

This Has absolutely nothing to do with South Asia, but I figure people want to know what I'm thinking. I usually don't plan ahead all that often because it never seems to work out that way. A lot of my friends had 5 or 10 year plans, but I could never decide what I was going to do next year, let alone 5 years down the road. Recently I've been thinking about grad school, and weighing my options for when I get back to the states. As of right now I feel like I'm not supposed to obssess about it, but focus on what I'm doing now, BUT if I am supposed to go back to school I've been thinking about what I'd like to study and I was thinking perhaps Psychology. I'm always trying to "psychobable" people and I have all these theories about people and their interactions with each other, that I think it would be a good fit. I'll let you know when I'm back home what I've decided. Anyway, in the meantime I was checking out this website, which I'm thinking is a spin off of the Myers Briggs test. But here are my results:

Benevolent Inventor

Benevolent Inventor- whatever that means. I'm always intrigued by these tests, and their results. I'm also intrigued as to why women are usually the ones who like to take these tests all the time. I wonder if there's something in our brains that makes us more inclined to do so. My sister in law used to get this magazine all the time called "Women's World". It wasn't the highest quality magazine, BUT it was clean and had good recipes in it. Every week there would be a new quiz like "what color are you?" or "what does your handwriting say about you?" I don't think these were very scientific tests, BUT we always did them and talked about the results afterwards. My brothers thought we were stupid for even taking the test seeing as it obviously wasn't very grounded, but we did anyway, despite the fact that we didn't really think the results were accurate. Why would you take a personality test if you knew the results didn't REALLY say anything about you? Any thoughts? What is it about women that makes us more inclined to have someone tell us about what the way we sleep "REALLY" tells us about ourselves?

It's Christmas Time, Mistletoe and Wine.....

...I don't remember the rest of the words to the song. Oh well, everyone knows that the day after Thanksgiving is the official day to decorate for Christmas. April and I have been a little behind schedule this year, and just managed to put up our Christmas tree yesterday. We were given a small tree when one of our friends went back to the States. It has lights and everything. Our Uncle is really excited to see our Christmas decorations because we have told him how important this holiday is to us. Unfortunately all of the lights that we were going to put up had issues, and wouldn't work! I think we'll go to the market in the next couple days to look for some new ones. On a different note, the weather has taken a turn for the coldest. It is now officially FREEZING!!! Admittedly for this Florida girl- I am a pansy when it come to cold weather. But you also have to remember that we don't have central heating, so right now I'm using my nalgene and a hot water bottle for heat. (I'm trying to conserve energy by not using our heaters until 1) Our uncle fixes the broken window in our room, and 2) it gets REALLY REALLY cold.
I have to say that it is pretty easy to get into the Christmas spirit when it's so cold outside, I'm hoping that we might get snow this year-apparently every 6 or so years snow actually falls in the town, not just on the surrounding mountains. The only problem with is being so cold is the accompanying desire to stay curled up with my hot water bottled, under a mountain of blankets. The only thing to rectify this situation is to wear a ridiculous amount of clothing. And by ridiculous, I mean ridiculous looking- I will definitely need some fashion guidance when I get back to the states, or to Thailand for that matter.

....The next Day.

One of my friends and team mates LOVES to play golf. I have to say I'm a little Anti-golf. Sometimes I would go to the driving range with my parents and hit around golf balls, while they practiced their swing. I always remember I had a difficult time hitting the ball straight, or far for that matter. I was torn between going to look for cream cheese by myself ( i have to take advantage while I'm in a town with good import stores), or being drug around a golf course with lots of people. Of course for an extrovert people win ALL the time, so rather than traumatize myself by actually playing golf, I opted for being the caddy, which by chance was also the cheaper option. There were only two people that had played before, and the other three were playing for the first time. The coach/teacher, Julie was very patient and everyone's game improved drastically, even if it did take us about 5 hours to play 5 holes. I don't think the course workers really wanted us there, for one we were ALL breaking the dress code, by wearing jeans, and two we took such a long time on each hole, that we had people trying to play through ALL the time. Despite the workers stalking us, and hinting for us to leave, we had a good time. I ended the evening with a visit to my language family's house to see how my Punjabi family are doing, some good chinese from Yo China, and a movie, before calling it a night. In the morning I went to a coffee shop with a friend and indulged in a cafe latte, before we all headed back home. It was some fun times had by all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, on this funfilled thanksgiving holiday, we jumped in a taxi at 6am and headed down the windy 6 hour long journey to the city beautiful. The trip took us a lot longer than originally anticipated because we had to stop every 5 minutes for the driver to say "hi" to his friends.(Picture: Emily and Julie trying to contain their excitement of the large amounts of good food in the next room) We also had an argument about the price before we had to get out of our taxi and into another one b/c our taxi didn't have up to date taxes! We finally arrived at our luxurious hotel, (it really was nice), cleaned up and headed out to the celebration house. When I lived in the city Beautiful I think I only saw one white person, but apparently in the past 8 months they've multiplied, and there were over 20 of us there. Some people were from Canada too. There was a ridiculous amount of food, and around about 2pm the eating began. There was potato salad, mashed potatoes, turkey, chicken, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn bread, corn, broccoli, ranch dressing, devilled eggs, broccolli cheese casserole, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, brownies, apple pie, whipped cream, and ice cream. For being in a place where pretty much all the food we ate is from "foreign" origins it was exceptionally good. After eating I sat still for quite a while in fear of sudden movements increasing my desire to recurgitate all the food I ate. After an hour or two I ventured upstairs to watch the Ohio ST. Michigan game. All I can say is AWESOME. I usually have a hard time getting into football unless I have a certain offiliation to one team. (Picture: Kyle and I trying to express our excitement, while still being culturally sensitive and enforcing the no "touching" rule) This game was incredible! I know most people saw it maybe 2 weeks ago now, but keep in mind that things take awhile longer to become available to download on Itunes. After the game was over it was time for our next adventure. We decided to go see the new James Bond movie at 8pm- not a bad movie, not that I'm a good critic, the last time I saw a movie in the theatre was almost a year ago. It felt like I was back in the States. American food, football, James Bond movie in English! It was a GREAT thanksgiving. The next day we even played golf....

Waghah Border.

The last day we were in Amritsar, we found a REALLY nice restaurant, which more than made up for the dive of a hotel that we stayed in the night before. I don't think I'm high maintainance by any means, but no hot water, dirty sheets, a dirty floor, a dripping tap, and some kind of fungus growing on the walls from a leaky pipe is just not my idea of a nice hotel, REGARDLESS of price! The only upside, was the cable, which for TV starved girls is pretty nice. We left the hotel early, to eat at the nice restaurant and relax before having to bargain for a taxi to take us to the border and then back home.
We finally got the price we wanted- this is when learning the national Language come in extremely handy. Flattered, and amazed I think we were actually able to get a decent price for our taxi, and the drivers were excited to take us. We arrived at the border early, and were attacked by a bunch of kids wanting to give us visors and flags. We caved and each bought a flag for 5 rupees (10cents) each. The gate finally opened and a bunch of over eager nationals started pushing toward the border area. We arrived and seemed to be waiting around, finally we decided we would try to push ourselves to the front when an Uncle that we were indeed in the middle of the men's section, and if we crossed the street we could follow the women and get seats first!- the one time when being a woman in here pays off!We took our seats in the VIP section (being white ALWAYS pays off here, except when trying to bargain) and waited for the fun to begin. The only way I can describe what happened next as similar to some kind of sports match in the States. There was jeering on both sides of the border, and thousands of people showed up for the event. There were even snacks!!! We waved our flags and tried to join in the cheering, but we couldn't understand what was being said! On the right was India, and on the left, Pakistan!!! Then the guards started, what I can only describe as an extreme display of manhood or something. Each border's guards would do some fancy display of shouting and leg flailing! It was pretty impressive. Then they took down the flags and everyone rushed towards the border shouting. We thought about making a run for the border, since we were so close, and it would be a cool story to tell, but the guards on the horses with big spears were kind of scary enough to make us change our minds. After being harassed a little bit more by little kids wanting to sell us things, and being hit on, and stalked by some guys we ran back to the taxi, jumped in and started the long journey back home.

Golden Temple.

The next leg of our journey was over and after checking into a somewhat sketchy looking hotel, we got rested up and headed out to the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is really famous in these parts and is particularly important for people of the Sikh religion.
http://www.sgpc.net/golden-temple/index.asp - click for more information.
The outerlayer of the inner temple is layed with gold leaf/copper plates. The the temple grounds are VERY extensive, including a kicthen area where people can eat, lots of rooms with people reading from the holy book and even rooms for people to stay in. It has been said that in one day the Temple gives out 10,000 chipattis, small round flat bread type things. I don't exactly know all the details but the temple is visited by thousands of people daily from all walks of life and faiths. The only requirement is that you keep you head covered and take off your shoes upon entering the Temple (Gurudwara).
We walked around, took pictures, were escorted by a little Sikh man trying to explain things to us, and then left to buy swords. There are 5 things that make Sikhs very distinctive: They do not cut their hair, and so wear turbans. They wear a silver bracelet, wear special underwear, carry a comb and also carry a ceremonial sword.
Of course the most popular thing among tourists are the ceremonial swords. We picked up a couple of things from outside the market before heading back to our hotel to crash for the night!

Visiting Dalai Lama Land.

We arrived in Dalai Lama land around mid-afternoon. The first thing I noticed was the large amounts of white people. Our guide, a fellow American, took us to a nearby Stupa (Buddhist Temple) where the Dalai Lama lives. So, I don't think he lives in the Temple, I think he has a house behind it. WE walked around watching the monks perform some kind of debate technique. They were talking really loudly at one another and clapping their hands. I was told that the clapping was like a mnemonic device to help them remember their arguments. There were lots of pairs of monks practicing together, making the whole scene kind of loud- but very interesting nonetheless. Unfortunately I don't have any more pictures of the temple, but there were prayer wheels that surround the inner room, and amusing signs warning people no to have their shoes stolen- I think the exact quote was "please mind that no one steals your shoes." or something to that effect. Side note : you have to take your shoes off when you go into the inner room, it's not that shoe theives randomly stalk the halls of Stupas world wide, looking for some unsuspecting white person to attack and rip the shoes from their feet.
Before visting Dalai Lama Land, we had lunch a cute little restaurant/bar. The reason I point this out is because the bar stools were in fact western saddles. I guess they were going with a whole "westen" theme. The picture's not great, but you get the point!! Oh and before anyone asks...no I didn't get to visit the Dalai Lama. I think he spends more time in the US than at his actual home!

The Fort.

We arrived at our first destination. WE explored around the first night, met some nationals, who invited us back to their house, and along the way they showed us the view of their city. It was seemingly uninteresting, when all of a sudden i looked above the clouds and there were HUGE, snow covered mountains in the distance. It was amazing!!! You couldn't even see where the mountains met the ground. They were just a silouhette in sky. I had to photoshop some of the pictures so you can see the mountains better in the picture, that's why they're freaky colours! The following day we decided to go see the fort before heading to a different place. My expectations were WAY low as far as this fort went. I was really expecting it to be a large pile of rocks that was, at one time a fort before it crumbled into a huge pile rocks. I was very surprised at what I was about to see. We arrived at the HUGE fort that reminded me of castles in Britain. A lot of it had be devestated by the 1905 earthquake, but the government has done a really good job of reconstructing and maintaining the grounds. The fort has passed through many different hands from Tribals to Muslims, Sikhs, and finally the British. I don't know how much of the building was completed before the British gained control, but there was definitely a feel of British influence in some of the Architecture- not that I'm an expert or anything. There was a small museum on the grounds that talked about some of the people that lived there over the years etc, and some of the languages found carved into stones in the area. Pretty interesting stuff!!! We walked around, took some more pictures of the magic mountains, that appear in the skyline from nowhere, and then headed out to the Dalai Lama's house. Not literally of course.