South Asian Wedding Celebration

As promised, here is a long overdue Hindi related update. So Paul and I are at least knee deep in Hindi at this point and are fighting our way through the grammar as best as we can. It’s not easy but language learning is a humbling experience. You have to be OK with sounding like an idiot for quite a while. We have become really good at that.

The good news is that we had our our progress tests (evaluations) this week and were told that we are both on track to get to the 2/2 score Paul needs for his consular position in New Delhi. In case you are wondering what that score means, the first number is a speaking score and the second – a reading one. We started at 0/0 in early September and are supposed to get to 2/2 by the end of March. The top of the scale is 5/5, which is native speaker fluency. Right now we are at 1/1, which was a relief because the evaluation is not really calibrated to our current level. The format and the difficulty of the material are the same as those we’ll have at our final exam at the end of March. The only difference is that at our progress evaluations we get one less long newspaper article than we will at our final exam.

What that means is that getting through the progress evaluation was really hard, painful at times even. We know how to read but our vocabulary is very basic and newspaper articles are way out of our league right now. We can also hold basic conversations but load us up with high level vocabulary and we are lost, which is kinda what happened during the evaluation. The evaluation takes two hours – one hour for speaking and the second for reading. The speaking part has three subsections: conversation, presentation and interview. The reading part has two subsections: reading 6 small articles in 5 minutes and then discussing their gist in English and reading one longer article in 7 minutes and presenting the gist of it in English.

So, amazingly enough, we got our 1/1, which we are told is where we are supposed to be at this point, so we are thrilled. But enough about that.

More importantly, a few weeks ago we had an awesome South Asian Wedding celebration at school (The Foreign Service Institute). It was supposed to be for Dashain, Diwali and Eid (major holidays in South Asia). Three days before the party/luncheon, the management of the South Asia Language Department learned that one of our classmates, Ben, was getting married and decided to make it a wedding celebration instead. Each language group secretly prepared a little number in the language they are learning and performed it for the groom at the party. Ben had no clue what was going on and was majorly and pleasantly surprised. The teachers also performed wedding rituals from their respective countries for Ben. Of course, there was a lot of yummy South Asian food as well.

The Hindi group performed an old wedding song. Our teachers had to help us with it, of course, making sure we understood the lyrics and helping us come up with the right rad moves for the song.  It was a little strange at first - we felt silly singing in Hindi and dancing around but we quickly got into the spirit and had a great time. Our teachers felt that we had to perform the song in Indian clothes but since almost none of us had any, they let us borrow clothes from them. The boys all wore kurtas (long shirts) and the girls sarees and churidar kameez ( tunic and skinny leg pants). This was my very first time wearing a saree and I absolutely loved it.

The saree I wore was made of pink and blue silk and I thought it was gorgeous. Putting it on was a little bit of a challenge but after watching a few youtube videos, I got the basics. I put it on myself on the day of the party but many of our teachers took the opportunity to fix it, which was a good thing because putting on/wearing a saree is really more of an art. Going to the bathroom in a saree is also tricky, especially if you’ve never done it before and the saree you are wearing is amazing and very much borrowed. I am happy to report that the saree did not get soiled in the process – whew. But I digress…

Without further ado here are some pictures of the festivities:

And here is a video of the song we, Hindi students, performed for the groom:

Aaj Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai (Today Is My Friend’s Wedding)

A Very Late Thanksgiving Recap

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Deep Creek, western MD. It was just us, the kids and my Mom. We stayed at the cottage of one of Paul’s brothers. We had a nice, quiet and relaxing long weekend. Since we weren’t in our home, we decided not to do much cooking, so we got a cooked turkey breast and a small ham with a bunch of sides instead. I rather liked that because we were able to spend a lot of time taking walks, naps and relaxing, which was just what the doctor ordered.

We did see a bunch of wild turkeys and deer. No bears this time but we did see a bear trap not too far from where we were staying. We also did some hiking at a state park with a bunch of beautiful waterfalls. It was a nice break from our “all Hindi all the time” routine but now we are back at it.

Speaking of Hindi – there’s a lot going on there but we are also so busy at school that I haven’t had a chance to gather my thoughts and write about it all. I will though, very soon, I promise.

A Drama Queen Birthday

Yesterday was Her Cuteness’s 8th birthday. We had a theater inspired party for her and her best friends at Creative Cauldron in Falls Church. The focus was a hands-on acting workshop lead by the wonderful Laura, a teaching artist, who was terrific at getting the kids excited and keeping them engaged in each activity.

The party started with creative introductions. Each kid picked a movement that represents their personality, which they used to introduce themselves to the group. Everyone then acted out not just their introduction movement but everyone else’s too – an excellent ice-breaker.

Then there were a series of Charades-like activities in which the children were separated in teams of six and would act out something as a group for the other team to guess.

The last activity involved a imaginary chest full of magical gifts. Each child got to pick a gift from the magic chest for Nia’s birthday and give it to her. This was my personal favorite because the kids were not allowed to use their voices. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of kids playing quietly like that. It was awesome:

Gifts for the birthday girl from an imaginary magic chest

Laura surprised me by inviting me to participate in the activity, which was tricky because I was filming at the same time but I managed somehow.

We closed the party with birthday cake and other treats. I had made rainbow colored cupcakes the night before and had them all in my new fancy double-decker cupcake carrier. Everything was honky dory until the handle broke and the cupcakes turned into a mangled frosted mess but we ate them anyway because the mess was contained in the carrier. Everyone had a great time and I’m pretty sure Nia is going back to Creative Cauldron  for more acting workshops/camps.

 

This was probably the best kid birthday party we’ve attended and we highly recommend Creative Cauldron if you need something different for your 4-14 year old.

Proud

My peeps (Paul, Her Cuteness and Chutney) have be unusually awesome lately, so I couldn’t help but brag about them a little.

I have known Paul was a Foreign Service Badass for a long time. I even dedicated one of the first posts of this blog to his Badassery. So, naturally, I was thrilled to learn that he was nominated and won an award for his work at the Office of eDiplomacy last year.  His award was Government Computer News’ Rising Star Award celebrating outstanding IT achievements in government. He got it in recognition for his efforts in organizing a number of events called Tech@State over the past year. So, a few weeks ago we got to go to a gala at a fancy hotel in Tysons Corner to collect his award. I think this was the first gala I’ve attended and it was a nice one. The set up was great, the food delicious but of course, the best part was celebrating my husband’s awesomeness.

Then, the other day we had a parent-teacher conference with our daughter’s teacher. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that we had a little bit of a painful experience after Her Cuteness was moved up to second grade mid-year last school year. She got a new teacher this school year and we were both hopeful and nervous at the same time. She seemed to be doing well but we weren’t sure because we hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to her teacher in detail until now.

The day of the conference, I asked Her Cuteness what she thought the teacher would say about her. She said he’d say that she’s  a good reader. I asked her if she thought he’d have any recommendations for improvement and she thought he may say that she needs to work more on her math. That made sense. She’s always been a great reader, but she doesn’t exactly love math or writing. She can do them but she doesn’t seem to enjoy them nearly as much as reading. Her second grade teacher had specific concerns about her math and writing skills last year, so we were expecting to hear something along those lines again.

Imagine our relief when her teacher told us that yes, she is a great reader but she is doing great in math and writing as well. He showed us her math tests and her writing assignments. He had nothing but wonderful things to say about her. He said she was smart, curious and imaginative. He also said she behaved well and got along with all her classmates. We were blown away, in a good way. Because hearing that your child is doing great at school is like music to any parents’ ears. We made a big deal of it to our daughter and went out for special treats to celebrate the occasion.

Last but not least, the littlest of the littles, Chutney, has been working extra hard too. He is 9 months old today and healthy and happy as can be. It’s been amazing to watch him in the last month as he seems to have gone “fast forward” developmentally. He has decided that walking is the most awesome thing ever and has been working his tail off (quite literally) to figure it out. He can’t really do it just yet but that’s all he wants to do. A mere two weeks ago he couldn’t lift his butt off the ground no matter how hard he tried. He was a little, shall we say, ahem, butt-heavy, (I hope you’ll pardon my Hindi, Son!) so he couldn’t crawl.

I was convinced he was going to skip crawling because he just didn’t seem interested in it (plus the whole butt-lifting wasn’t happening) but a couple of weeks ago, a miracle of miracles, he lifted his butt of the ground and started crawling. That didn’t diminish his enthusiasm for walking though. He has been pulling himself up on everything using his arms and mouth (yes, you read that  right – wish I had a picture of that…). He constantly wants one of us to hold him by his hands and walk with him. His latest accomplishment is figuring out how to work this thingamajig:

Chutney learning to walk

I am pretty sure he’ll be walking really soon. Guess I’d better go babyproof the house, huh?

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Here’s hoping that your Halloween was a thriller and that your pumpkins are overflowing with good candy!

Our last Halloween in the US for a while was splendid, though a bit chilly. This was the first time I’ve seen snow on Halloween and let me tell you: I am not a fan. I liked our Florida Halloweens better. In Florida, you can go Trick or Treating in your flip-flops and you can do it all night long, if you want to (not so easy with wee ones) without dying of exposure. There, you can be a princess or a fairy without having to put on a turtleneck underneath your fancy spaghetti strap costume (which looks oh, so stylish) or donning your fairy wings on top of your pink parka (which is harder than it sounds). Oh, Florida, I didn’t think I’d say this but I guess I do miss you, after all.

Aaaaah, those days are gone but I am hoping that Trick or Treating in India will be kinda like in Florida. A girl can dream, right?

So, yeah, our Halloween was fine, despite the cold. We went to a couple of parties, we carved a pumpkin and Her Cuteness got to go Trick or Treating old-style (door-to-door) in our neighborhood. Nia was supposed to be the Little Mermaid. She’s had the costume for a while but had a change of heart because she decided in the last moment that “Princesses are so baby-ish!” and I had to whip up another costume in a couple of hours. Fun times! She was a flamingo*, a little improvised but hey, I’ve seen worse.

Max had a little 6-9 month-sized alligator* costume. He is not quite 9 months old yet but the hunky babe that he is, he was busting out of it a few weeks ago, so I had to look for something larger. I found just the thing  at a yard sale - a cute little Dalmatian outfit for $1. It’s perfect - made of fleece, so it’s nice and warm on his cute little bum-bum. Plus, it’s for up to 24 months, so he just might be able to wear it next year.

Anywhoooo, without further ado, here are some pictures of the festivities for your enjoyment:

*We accidentally ended up with a Florida theme of sorts – I guess that’s our tribute to our former home state.

A Sight For Sore Eyes…

So we’ve been in Hindi for almost 7 weeks now. We can read and are starting to get into the weeds of Hindi grammar. We still can’t say much because we know only one tense (Present Habitual) and our vocabulary is pretty limited but we are getting there – slowly but surely.

In an effort to expand our Hindi vocabulary I decided to watch as many Bollywood movies as I possibly could. Paul sort of agreed to watch with me but we soon realized that most of the highly rated Bollywood movies on Netflix were 3+ hours long. Paul was not going to watch a 3+hour long movie, so the first time we looked until we found something shorter. I don’t remember the name of the first movie we saw but it was not worth it. It was way not what we expected. It was mostly in English, had no dance numbers and was about wife swapping – very weird.

The second time we sat down to watch a Bollywood movie I thought we’d try one of the longer ones, so I picked Jodha Akbar a historical drama (made in 2007), which I thought would help us not only improve our Hindi but also better understand Indian culture. The only problem was it was 3 hours and 40 minutes. Paul fell asleep after the first 30 minutes, so I watched the rest alone.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect much but boy, was I pleasantly surprised. I did learn a few new Hindi words and a thing or two about Indian culture and history but better than that (and I mean way better) was this:

Hubba, hubba!

You’re welcome, ladies! His name is Hrithik Roshan and he plays the Mughal Emperor Akbar (the male lead). When I saw that scene I was all Ooooh la la…

Is he hot or is he hot? I don’t know about you but I can watch that scene until I am blue in the face… (I may be turning Avatar-ish hue already, ha!)

So, yeah, I have a crush on the guy. Oooopsies! I know, I know, it’s been a couple of years since I was in high school. I shouldn’t be having crushes anymore, right? I thought that when you pass the age of 25 and/or have a kid or two, the part of your brain responsible for crushes dies. Apparently not. Now I am the butt of all kinds of jokes around our house... Whatevs…

If there are guys reading this – do not despair for the female lead (Jodha Akbar) is none other than Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the most beautiful woman in the world, according to many. Here’s a little something for you, guys:

So, though it is long, the movie is a feast for the eyes and ears. The costumes and scenery are amazing, the music and dance numbers – lovely, and the plot - very interesting. According to some reviews Akbar’s character is depicted accurately, while Jodha’s not so much but even if that’s the case I’ve forgiven the movie creators and totally, wholeheartedly recommend the movie.

Enjoy!

Georgetown Cupcake!!!

Yesterday was a rather gloomy day. It started out being cold, drizzly and just unpleasant. But it got better. A hell of a lot better…

Paul and I had to run an errand in Georgetown that was kind of a drag but on the way home I noticed a miracle of miracles: no line outside Georgetown Cupcake!!!

Boy did that make my day. I had heard people rave about Georgetown Cupcake ever since we moved back to the DC area a year and a half ago. I really wanted to try them but every time we went to Georgetown there werre unbelievable lines outside the store, sometimes going on for blocks. There was no way in hell I was going to wait for hours for cupcakes and I didn’t really understand the people who did. It’s cupcakes after all, how great could they be. And at $2.50 a piece they weren’t exactly dirt cheap. So I had sort of given up on the idea but today in the the cold, nasty drizzle those cupcakes were just calling my name.  The fact that there was no line out the door was just the icing on the (cup) cake. Pun intended.

So, yeah, I am only human. I can resist anything but, you know, temptation. I ran in quickly before Paul had a chance to change his mind and mine. Inside the door there was a little bit of a line but it was just long enough to let me make up my mind about what I wanted.

I knew I may not get these beauties again because of the insane lines, the price and because stuff like that goes straight to my badonkadonk, which is not exactly small these days, so I went for the dozen. I got Mint Cookies N Cream, Salted Caramel, Gluten Free Lava, Chocolate Birthday, Chocolate 3, Peanut Butter Fudge, Coconut, two Pumpkin Spice and two Red Velvet. There were about 15 girls working in the store, who looked like they’d never had a cupcake in their lives. They wrapped my cupcakes and put them in a beautiful pink box.

I could hardly wait the 30 or so minutes it took us to get home and eat lunch before we could try the cupcakes. And let me tell you, those things were not just pretty. They were deeeeeeelish! I think the Red Velvet and the Salted Caramel may be my faves.

They are very sweet. One is about all you can have at one sitting. And they are not very big. But they are tasty. The cake is good but that’s not that hard to do. It’s the frosting that’s pretty incredible. It’s light and fluffy and heavenly….

While I was at the store I noticed that they were promoting a book written by the two sisters who started Georgetown Cupcake. The book tells the story of how they started the company but it also has recipes. And guess what, I’ll be buying it as soon as it’s out on Nov. 8 because I have to figure out how to make that frosting. I just have to!