Christmas in India

This was the first time I have ever spent Christmas anywhere else than in Minnesota. It was quite a bit different, especially without any snow!
On Tuesday night, some of our “neighbors”, Polly and Jim hosted a white elephant party. This is where everyone brings a gift/something than you don’t want anymore and then each person opens a present or steals an already opened one from someone else. Some of the interesting gifts included a very tacky, red and blue blinking Taj Mahal, a hand puppet of a rabbit in a top hat and some snowmen earrings. It was really fun and a everyone seemed to really get into it. One of the best parts of the night was when we realized that one of the most sought after gifts (a bag of broccoli and chocolate- not mixed together) was not meant for the exchange. One of the partygoers had actually brought that for a specific person and somehow it ended up in the white elephant pile!

On Christmas Eve, Megan and I went into the bazaar to pick up some last minute items for our lasagna. We spent our Christmas Eve night making/eating lasagna (without ricotta cheese though…) and talking to friends and family back home on skype. It was pretty low-key, but fun.
Christmas Day was a whole different ballgame. There were still quite a few families on the hillside for Christmas, so everyone took part in a traveling feast/progressive dinner. There were five stops on our mountain. We began with starters down (quite a ways down) at the Huswaite’s house around 1:00. From there we moved the farthest, almost to the top of the hill to Polly and Jim’s house for soup. After soup, we had the main course of ham, peas, corn and sweet potatoes at Judy and Dana Crider’s house. From there we mostly traversed across the hill to the Swanson’s for desert (this was by far my favorite stop!). There were a TON of deserts there, including chocolate cake, lemon meringue, cheesecake and brownies. After dessert we sang some Christmas carols that unfortunately included BOTH ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’ AND ‘Little Drummer Boy’, but I got over it. After dessert, most of the people dropped off and went home, but there were a few of us brave souls that made it to Pete and Dot’s house for what was supposed to be tea and a movie, but ended up being snacks, wine and chatting. The wine was to celebrate two of the staff that got married the previous weekend.

Tomorrow, New Year’s Eve, Megan and I are headed off to Delhi to begin our winter vacation traveling. Our friend, Jeanne, is already in Delhi waiting for us. We will spend two nights in Delhi and then take the train to Lucknow. We’ll stay there for a few days and then continue on the train to Varanasi. We will spend a couple more days in Varanasi and then finish our long train journey be ending up in Calcutta. We have a couple friends from the music department who have offered to show us around Calcutta, including attending a classical Indian music festival on January 12th! We fly out of Calcutta on the 15th and head to northern Goa. We will hang out on the beach for a week there, before we head over to Kerala for the last bit of our trip. We will spend another week in Kerala AND stay in a house boat for one night! Then we come back to Delhi/Mussoorie on January 28th. I am currently charging both of my camera batteries, so I can take lots of pictures!