Getting things started in Shimla...The past 23 years of my life Christmas has looked basically the same every year, but this year things were a bit different. One of our first Christmas activities was a baking party at our house with Julie, Emily and our two language helpers, Monika and Niddie. We ate a mixture of American sweets and Indian sweets and basically made ourselves sick! The two Indian girls left asking if we ate anything besides sweets at christmas time :)
One Sunday before Christmas we attended a community wide gathering of churches here in Shimla which included little skits and songs from many different groups varying from little children and high-school students to families. The picture on the left is of Monika's family and Julie singing a Christmas carol in Hindi.
Moving on to Chandigarh...A few days before christmas we took off with Monika's family to another city to celebrate with her aunt's family there. Our day and 1/2 there included being awakened about 1 am to 25 people caroling (punjabi fashion which is loud and lively with drums) in their living room. Having been asleep for a couple of hours already we didn't plan on getting out of bed, but after our light being turned on and off many times and several people coming to get us we finally got out of bed and went downstairs in our pj's to watch
these strangers sing. An added treat was a scary santa dancing punjabi style. The next day we were in a parade of all the churches in the city for about 6 hours. We rode in a trailer being pulled by a tractor in a long line of similar tractor-trailer "floats." After the parade there was a rally for everyone, and then they served everyone "lunch" about 5pm. We definitely saw some interesting sights on this very LONG day.
Oh, sweet Delhi...
Christmas eve morning Julie and I headed to Delhi where we celebrated with lots of other Americans. It was great! Of course I missed my family at home, but it really is a wonderful blessing to have such a great family here. We went to three different parties (2 on Christmas Eve and one Christmas Day) which included amazing american food, some christmas caroling (in English), reading the Christmas story together, watching "Elf", a white elephant gift exchange, and some pretty great fellowship! 
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