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?