One year over, and new one begins...

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year!

So here's a run down of my Christmas and New year...

On Christmas Day the first thing we did was open our stockings from each other and ate Christmas cake, we then went over to our hosts house who helped us all put on our brand new sarees! In the morning we had a service at church - this involved the team doing a skit of the nativity (from the point of view of Mrs Donkey, Mrs Sheep and Mrs Camel!) and doing Indian dancing at the front of church! This was followed by us going back to our hosts house and onto their roof (yes, it was a lovely hot day!) to help prepare vegetables ready for lunch. After a couple of hours of dancing, singing and chatting to our hosts family lunch was eventually ready at 4.30pm. This Christmas dinner was typically Indian - rice, curry and chicken (though having meat is special). We spent the rest of the afternoon opening presents, and in the evening we all cuddled up under blankets, in our pyjamas eating chocolate watching Finding Nemo. It was a very different Christmas to usual as it has much less hype than in England but I still enjoyed it, and it helped me to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Boxing Day was very much a lazy day for us as we staying in our pyjamas until 4pm watching films and eating more chocolate!! In the evening we went out for a lovely meal with our hosts and watched Avatar.

Yesterday (New Years Eve) we spent with our hosts watching our first Bollywood movie! It was a good film, and finished just in time for us to countdown to midnight, and welcome in the new year with a cheer, sweets, an attempted at sining Auld Lange Syne (none of us really knew the words) and a prayer. It was a great evening :)
Today, we've been at church having a thanksgiving service and church lunch.
2009 has been a very good year for me - I've had so many new experiences and grown in myself and my relationship with God. Thank you to everyone who's been part of my 2009 to make it special :) I'm very much looking forward to whats instore for 2010!!

We start our holiday on Sunday and don't return until the 18th so no more updates from me til then! Prayers for a safe and happy holiday would be very much appreciated - we're going to Agra, Jaipur, Darjeeling and Kolkata for those of you who are interested.
I hope you all have a great couple of weeks :)

Love,
Hannah x