New Year

Yesterday was the start of the Bengali new year. We spent the day with Anapuna and her family. Her sisters were both there, and her cousins and mother. We learned how to make these embroidered patterns from one of her cousins. It was really fun. We also had lunch. It was a really special lunch because of the new year. There was rice, greens, curry, fish, sweet curd, eggplant, lots of different kinds of green mango, dol (lentils), sweet rice, and all the dessert things we brought. It was really good. After lunch, we looked at the pictures from Wednesday. Mom went with Anapuna and her mother to a festival (I don’t remember the name) for the new year. It was apparently really hot and crowded. I didn’t go because they had animal sacrifices. Mom also had Punjab, which is blessed food. After we looked at the pictures, we went out to the garden. They have two love birds, one yellow, and one blue. The blue one likes baths, and the yellow is too stupid to figure out how to get out of the water. It was pretty funny to watch. The blue one raises itself to the water and just sits in it, perfectly happy. It was strange, but funny. Then we saw they’re garden. There were lots of different plants. They gave Mom two peppers and a papaya. I got cotton from a cotton plant. We were leaving, but then we started taking pictures, then we took pictures of the goats. There were about 17 goats, possibly more because they kept moving. There were 4 adults, a bunch of kids, and 2 babies. They kept rolling in the dirt, and head butting each other. There were two that kept climbing on chairs and benches together. They were very funny. It was a fun day.