This was supposed to be Christmas plus India but it was too long so I divided it in two.
As I mentioned in the last post, at the moment my entire sense of the universe is doing cartwheels, like without gravity because basic constructs like the laws of physics and time are currently on hiatus. Between UEA and this moment, I spent Christmas in London with my flatmate, Becca, traveled for a full 24 hours (actually I’m not really sure because of the time zones and the weird time vacuum that exists on airplanes), and spent two days in India. I have a whole mess of stories.
The trip to Becca’s house went surprisingly smoothly, no train delays and pretty cheap. Best of all, the gentleman sitting next to me on the coach was snapping his fingers and tapping to what based on the rhythm I assumed was blue music the entire way to London. Upon further examination I discovered that he was actually listening to the Macarena over and over again on his Ipod.
I don’t want to brag about my awesome Irish-English Christmas or anything but IT WAS THE COOLEST EVER. Becca’s giant family is as awesome as she is. Upon my arrival, I met her parents, granny, and many siblings. We enjoyed what I imagine is a traditional English Christmas Eve dinner (many boiled things) as the family amusedly regaled me with tales of a recent wedding including delightful characters such as alcoholic uncle, parole breaking crack dealer, VPL girl, and an invented fiancé named Wilburt who granny promptly rejected etc., and asked me about my people, the Amish (British people love asking Pennsylvanians about the Amish). Then we went to Catholic mass, where they sang completely unfamiliar Christmas songs (until the very end when we sang a few I knew at a funeral march pace and 3 octaves too high for a normal human range so that the lady in front of us turned around and stared at me because I my voice kept cracking and I was laughing hysterically) and we all enjoyed a hilariously off key rendition of Oh Holy Night. Christmas Day included more storytelling, holiday cheer, several rousing rounds of Granny Battles – a game involving two remote controlled grandma action figures which granny insisted were being “naughty and should be put to bed.” I discovered why Christmas poppers are not allowed to be mailed. I thought they only included little frog action figures, but the fancier ones have things like screw driver sets inside them. In addition to poppers (awesome), I also got to try Christmas pudding (English fruitcake, but beloved rather than mailed to disliked relatives)… not just any Christmas pudding though, flaming brandy Christmas pudding. As in with fire. Awesome. (and pretty ironic considering England’s stance on fire safety. Just saying.) More storytelling, and then a marathon of English TV to keep me awake for my 5 AM taxi (The IT Crowd is a fantastic television show).
Part 2 (India stuff) is the next post up.
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