Merry Christmas.
My back was cold last night and I shivered the whole night. It made me very tired this morning. I did not feel rested. I stayed in bed till 9am. Anar treated us to butter sugar biscuits that Juno brought from the US and tea. We watched the film "The Caravan".
Juno, Anuja and I left for Christmas shopping at 10:20am. Juno has interest in a male friend here and we went shopping. She also got bangles for his parents who are visiting him in Nepal. We went to check out fabrics to see what things we could get custom tailored. I finally got samosas and pokras. It was delicious samosas. This one sells the best samosas. The crust is perfectly spiced and so was the stuffing. I have decided that I am going to have samosas every day from this particular stand. They are cheap too.
I came back to Dalba at the house at 12pm I knew Anar would be waiting to eat together. I went for a hot shower at 1:30pm. The water is solar powered here so there is only hot water during high noon. I was so happy to wash in hot water. Past few days I have been washing in cold, cold, coooooooooooooold water because I didn't know about how the system worked. I gave myself a double shower in attempt to clean myself out of all the pollution etc...
I watched Anuja cook and she used tumeric, mehti, cumin powder, salt for all her dishes every meal. I did laundry and followed everyone in hang drying. I just don't see how it will get clean blowing in the smogy wind. I'm like,... I just washed this and by the time it dries, it will be all dirty again before I wear it.
In the afternoon I went shopping for tailers to make a few sets of sarawas. These are are modern saris. I actually find it more conservative than classical saris, more skin is covered. But somehow modern to some people means bad so they don't agree with this attire. Weird.
I bought color pencils and white spiral pad. I miss doing art. I can't believe I went so long without doing art other than photography. Then Juno and I met up late afternoon to get together to make Christmas dinner for everyone. Everyone was excited about it. I made basil eggplant and fried king oyster mushroom. Since people here are used to using their hands to eat, and my cooking was made to be eaten with utensil, they really had a hard time picking up the food. The normal mashing, slushing, and running the food all over the plate didn't work. The hit was the fried mushrooms. They all commmented on how it doesnt' taste vegetarian, it's more like fried chicken to them.
Since it was a holiday, Anar had the BBQ grill used for our bon fire to keep us warm.
