Winter Antics

 

Hi there, can I help you? I am working out of the dryer today… doing important baby work… you know, cutely. It’s nice and toasty in here. You should try it some time.

I’ve been looking for a good place to hide my favorite Jenga blocks… away from, ahem, nosy parents. Heeey, this speaker looks perfect! Even if they find them, they’ll never be able to take them out without my help ‘cause have you seen how huge their hands are, ha!

 

What, you think you’re the only one that likes FUGGs (fake UGGs) around here? I was feeling a little cold today…

Oh, yeah, he’s also eating cat food. His sister did just that when she was around the same age, so we had to put the cat food up on a shelf and out of her reach. We were sort of expecting that Chutney may be interested in the cat food as well, so we put it up high in anticipation before he started crawling. But clever little fellow that he is, he went and got some right from the big box. I am sure it tasted great, baby! 

Along the same lines (only grosser), he has decided that toilets are simply irresistible. We try to keep the bathroom doors closed at all times but on a couple of occasions someone must have forgotten and we caught him throwing toys in and playing in the water. Oh, what fun!!! I managed to wash his hands before he put them in his mouth, I think, but he is quick and it’s just a matter of time before he beats me to it. Now that’s a puke fest I am not looking forward to.

I’m off to Chutney proof the house because simply baby proofing is clearly not cutting it.

Look Who’s Walking!

Yeah, he is. It took him a while to perfect the unsupported walk but he figured it out a few days ago and is now walking like a big boy!

Go Chutney!

These cute little monkey feet are made for walking….

Long Time No Blog

I know I am unfashionably late with this but I’m going to say it anyway: Happy New Year, everyone!

I’ve been MIA for a couple of weeks. I do have an excuse, however. It’s lame but lame’s better than none, right? So, here it goes:

I was into the thick of holiday prep madness on 12/23 when my laptop decided to cr@p out on me. I am not going to tell you how ticked off I was by that… Right after I had put together a little slideshow with the highlights of our 2011 and was about to share with you here. But alas, the slideshow had to sit tight in my machine until I got back home from Chicago and could take it to get fixed. So, two weeks and $200 later, I have the laptop in working order and don’t think for a second that I am not going to subject you to my little creation, late or not.

Besides, I happen to be Eastern Orthodox (by default) and most Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas yesterday, so I am not that late, right? Of course, Bulgarians are not among those that celebrated yesterday but let’s pretend that’s not the case, just this once, shall we? So, Merry Belated Christmas to all of you guys that celebrated it, and Happy Belated Holidays to everyone else!

Without further ado, here’s the blessed slideshow that may or may not have caused my laptop to go into a coma:

Highlights from our 2011

Also very late is our Christmas/Holiday card picture but I thought I’d post it up here for the record anyway. It’s a sequel to last year’s and I just realized that I didn’t put the one from last year up here, so you get two for one this year. See if you can spot the differences.

 

This is all I’ve got today but I will be back soon with more pictures and updates.

Buzz

Have you guys heard of Buzz Bakery? Well, until recently, neither had I. A couple of our Hindi classmates brought breakfast goodies and cupcakes from Buzz and yeah, they are all pretty darn good. That’s why I’m bothering telling you so. They may just be better than Georgetown Cupcake and we know how I feel about them. And yes, I did just say that. If you don’t believe me, go try Buzz and let me know your thoughts.

Anyway, I was considering making Buzz my dirty little secret but we wouldn’t want me to be the only obscenely happy and fat person now would we, so had to share the joy.

Like Georgetown Cupcake, Buzz cupcakes are not cheap but they are sinfully delicious. Their frosting is smooth and rich and the cake moist and tasty. In the picture below you see (from top left) Chocolate Vanilla, Chocolate Mocha, Red Velvet, Gingerbread, Cookie and White Vanilla. Yum, yum, yum!

But Buzz is more than just cupcakes. They have coffee, scones, muffins, croissants, waffles, sandwiches, cakes and other baked goodies. They have two locations – the original one in Alexandria and a new one in Ballston – walking distance from the metro and conveniently, just a hop, skip and jump from FSI.

So, if you happen to be in the DC/Northern Virginia area and in desperate need of a little pick-me-up, Buzz might just be the place for you.

Enjoy!

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.