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.

More than enough traveling.

There is a lot of documentation for the traveling that I have done over the past week, so I've decided to break it up into different sections. It may take me a few days to upload everything. This first post is about Halloween. I can't believe it was almost two weeks ago now, but time flies when you travel. The day started with us decorated our house for our "Fall Festival" and buying the biggest pumpkin we could find. For $2 we found a 10kg- 22lb pumpkin. Most people looked at us strangely as we walked through the market carrying the oaf of a gourd, and our neighbours asked us what we were going to do with all that pumpkin. We told them that we wouldn't waste anything and they could have the left overs. The carving began and just about ALL our neighbors asked me what I was doing. After about an hour's work the masterpiece was finished. Our friends from out of town arrived and we started the fun with chocolate fondue and s'mores. We nick named our pumpkin friend Dixy, after Dixschit (pronounced- well never mind) a little boy that lives below us. The fun that night was short had since we had to wake up early the next morning to head out on our adventures!