Eid

Happy Friday! This is BL here. How is Christmas so close? How did the Lake Show lose to Sac Town? How is it still raining down here? How excited are you for LOST starting up again in January? How have we been in Oz for two months already?

Amidst all the questions to ponder, we are plugging away getting stuff done and having lots of fun as sydneysiders. Right now it is Friday afternoon. Taylor and I are relaxing at the apartment doing a whole lot of nothing. Listening to Alanis Morsette. Working on crosswords. Perusing the interwebs. It’s a tough life. I told myself last night that I would go to the beach today no matter how gloomy the weather is. Well outside it is pretty dark and cloudy and I have zero desire to pull on a sweatshirt and go sit in the sand by myself and try and read The Fountainhead.

So here I am blogging. I have set into a work schedule where I work 6 days a week from 6-10pm and barely make enough money to pay the bills and put a couple tens aside every week for traveling come March. At this rate I will be able to live off those savings until approximately March 2 before I need to dip into my savings from back home. Which is ok because it’s just money. Money isn’t real. But still I hopefully will be able to pick up another job for during the day so I don’t have to work 6-10pm every weekend night. That’s not too much fun.

Anyways the one day I get off from work is Tuesday and this last Tuesday I was invited by some of my friends at work to their Eid feast get together dinner. My friends from work are from Bangladesh and Eid is apparently one of the largest holidays in Bangladesh. I didn’t really learn as much about the traditional activities of Eid as I would have liked but I surmised it involved a lot of livestock slaughtering and dancing and general merrymaking. For us on Tuesday we just met up at their apartment a little ways outside the city. We sat around and had drinks and then ate some delicious traditional food. Some people were dressed up in traditional garb. Saris and such. My favorite part was the food. They brought out some chicken curry, beef curry, and rice and gave utensils to me and the other foreigners. I began using my fork and knife and then realized that everyone else was just digging into their food with their hands. I immediately discarded my eating utensils and began trying to figure out how to shovel heaps of curry and rice into my mouth with my awkward paws. It was the weirdest feeling to be mixing my food up with my hand. They brought out the hot sauce and warned me that even a small dollop would be too much mixed into a plateful of food. I didn’t listen very carefully to what they were saying. The hot sauce was delicious and the tiniest amount added so much flavor to my whole plate once I mixed it into everything with my hands. There was a bite of extreme amounts of hot sauce that left me incapacitated for a few minutes. I was laughed at as my whole face was running and I could barely breathe. I was laughing too. All in all I was just happy to find a real hot sauce for the first time in Oz. It had been too long. The feast was so much fun and such an experience. I left with rice and curry all over me, my nose running, my hands wreaking of curry (they still haven’t lost the scent today), and a smile on my face.

That’s the big story from this week for me. Volleyball this weekend hopefully. Happy Bday Mom! Everyone continue to leave comments and send emails about home please.

Love You All