Christmas

Now that's more like a Christmas tree Charlie Brown.

Christmas up in the hills has come and gone. The weather has been incredibly warm during the day and insufferably cold during the nights. I've been out in tshirts most days and have to bundle up with a fleece, scarf, and hat whilst I light my bukari during the nighttime hours.

To be honest, the holidays just haven't been the same for me for a while now. Christmas is a great time to be a kid when you get all of those toys and games and you can sit around the tree admiring your loot. Once I stopped getting the toys I think that Christmas just sort of lost the luster it once had. Things were only made less lustrous when mom died with Christmas being her favourite holiday and all. That being said, in recent years I've really tried to just treat it as any other day. Of course, being in India and away from family, it was still difficult to treat it as such.

I was fortunate enough to be invited by one of the families still on the hillside over to their house on Christmas Eve. We sat around talking and drinking mulled wine. One of their visitors plays accordion semi-professionally, so I chatted with him a bit and promised to bring the accordion to the festivities the next day. That night, two English teachers and myself went to the local Catholic church for Midnight Mass. I primarily went out of tradition and was expecting all of these familiar carols and the typical stuff like that. However, I stepped into the church and literally felt like I had entered a chapel in Las Vegas. There were blinking lights and gaudy decorations all over the place. Also, I did not realize that the service (and most of the carols) would be in Hindi. I was able to follow along via the motions and everything but I had no idea what the sermon was about. It was nice to go and see how a mass is done in India and now at the very least I can say I've gone to a Hindi Midnight Mass.

I didn't bother getting up early the next day since nothing was going on until after 12. Since so many of us were still on the hillside during Christmas we decided to have a progressive dinner. I had done this once before in high school and I was looking forward to it. We started off down at the bottom of the hill at my head of department's home. It was just snacks. Crackers, cheese, etc. We then headed up the hill past my place and up to the home of one of the social studies teachers. We had soup there. I had been craving chili for a while now and when I heard they had some there I immediately jumped on it. The next stop was down to one of the math teacher's place for the main course. We had ham, sweet potatoes, corn and peas. It was prepared nicely and tasted great. From there we climbed up the hill to one of the counselor's homes to have some dessert. It was here that we busted out the guitars and accordion and sang some carols. Afterwards a few of us made it to the end. The last stop was just coffee and light snacks to round out the evening. We were going to watch a movie but got into just talking instead. We had a young couple here that eloped over the break so we toasted to them and wished them all the best. Afterwards, we all parted ways I lit my bukari and put on some Bing. Overall, it was a good day and I was glad I was able to spend it with so many people.

Here's some photos I took. I'm not the best about taking pictures (I usually forget I even have the camera.) but I tried.

The accordion was a big hit (duh); everyone wanted to give it a go.

Chatting it up with the newlyweds.

Carols. Notice the accordion. Notice it's not me playing it. I've only recently gotten a chance to play with it and I still am not comfortable at all with my left hand.

Singing.

A few views of the mountains from the top of the hill.

Seeing these always reminds me of Eurythmics.

Apparently, this house is for sale. For a pretty penny too.

This would be your view.