Well this year tops the oddest Christmas and New Years ever! Christmas day was spent with my Bangla family, the Sarker¡¦s. In the morning we went to their church- they go to a small Baptist church, close to our house. I am not over exaggerating when I say that there were 9 guards there! Some were police, some were security guards, some were from the army and some were R.A.B. (Rapid Action Battalion). Why were they at the church? Well a couple of years ago some people bombed one (or maybe some) church(es) on Christmas day. So the government last year decided to protect all churches in B¡¦desh by sending them guards. Well this year security has tightened due to all the bombing that have happened over the last year so this year they added more guards! It was the weirdest experience to have your purse checked before going into the church. And during the service I saw out the window that the guards were constantly walking around the church and when cars came in they used that funny mirror to look under the cars! The service was long and boring- it was over 2 hours long and all in Bangla! So my 2 sisters and I left early and hung around outside. Then we went to Fantasy Kingdom. It is an amusement park, like Valley Fair in the US, except it is much smaller and the rides are not as thrilling. But we went and had a good time. I was actually scared to go on the rides because I thought they were for sure gonna break. But they didn't- I am still here.
Then on the 26th I took a 3 hour bus ride and met up with Reba. Over the next 4 days we traveled around motorbike and van to go to 2 weddings and one funeral! One of the weddings was so far north that we were only 5 km away from the Indian border and we were able to see the foothills of the Himalayas! I was so excited to see the faint outline of the hills! Note- I have to see Mt Everest before I leave here! Anyways so the weddings were awesome and of course very different. Weddings for the Mandi (Indigenous people) last 2 days! Sweet! On the first day they have a wedding reception, lots of speeches and eating of pork (mostly fat), then in the evening they have more food (pig again!) and a dance with drums and chanting. The next day they have the wedding ceremony which is similar to the West. And of course we were fed pork meat and fat.
Being a foreigner at a Wedding was very interesting. We were treated like royalty yet we barely new the wedding party! We always got the front seat whether we wanted it or not, we always ate with the bride and groom and always ate first and we were accompanied everywhere we went. I appreciated their hospitality but I really didn¡¦t like the special treatment, it felt really odd.
Then I spent the next couple of days back at the Korean Farm (where I used to live) with Reba and then on New Years Eve we went to a small town called Pirgacha and stayed at a friend¡¦s mud house. We played cards for a long time, sat around, made popcorn, and made cookies with barely anything and no stove! Then we went of a walk right before Midnight and celebrated the countdown on a bridge surrounded by rice fields and banana plantations!
Now for a list of other things I did or tasted over the holidays:
"h Slept in a mud hut with no running water and no electricity
"h Danced at a wedding and a funeral- I learned a tribal dance, it is kind of like line-dancing!
"h Tried homemade rice wine- didn¡¦t like it that much
"h Accidentally ate Eel! Can you believe it! I put, what I thought was some sort of meat on my plate and as I asked what it was I popped it in my mouth. Joel said ¡§its eel meat.¡¨ I didn¡¦t believe him at first but he wasn¡¦t lying! I now can add eel to my repertoire of weird things that I have eaten.
"h Wore my first Sari- it is very beautiful but very restrictive!
"h Watched a Hindi style dance off! Absolutely breathtaking!
"h Actually experienced cold weather!
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