It's really starting to feel like fall in Delhi and I'm thrilled. It has us all in the holiday spirit so this week we took on the challenge to find and carve pumpkins.
We've caught glimpses of a large fruit/vegetable market on the main street but never had a reason to go until now. From the street you see two large stands of fruit but behind that was a dozen more stands of vegetables. It was amazing.
Each man has a display of his vegetables. You just tell him how much you want of which vegetable and they gather it for you. They're sold by the kilo and usually weighed out with scales and weighs but this was the first veg guy I've ever seen with an electronic weight machine. Fancy.. :)
(They cover vegetables with wet brown clothes to keep them fresh.)
And this ladies and gentlemen is a totally normal way to ride home from the market - a bicycle rickshaw. Most of the times I ride home from grocery shopping on one of these (which is only 7 blocks or less). You usually give 10-20 rupees which is about 20-30 cents. In the summer I give more because it's really hot, which makes his job harder so I feel like he should earn more.
Once we got home we made some hot tea, put on Christmas music, and started carving our pumpkin. I'm usually the main carver because anything crafty is more my thing.
It was actually really hard to get that top lid off so I needed Luke's assistance.
Pumpkins here aren't orange.. they are green and khaki. But they taste and smell the same.
Ezra wasn't too interested in the carving so he was happier playing with legos.
This is his current "smile" when he knows his photo is being taken.. haha.
After pumpkin carving we ordered in some dominos pizza. Pizza here always comes with italian seasoning packets and I have really grown to LOVE lots of italian seasoning on my pizza.
A family photo with the finished carved pumpkin.
We ended the night at the park. We have an awesome sports complex down the street that we just got a membership to this month and now go to a lot in the evening. They have a nice small children's playground and just about every (Indian) sports court you can think of. Luke has a friend he meets with to play tennis and his wife (standing beside the slide in the picture below) comes and visits with Ezra and I. She's a teacher, speaks great English, and is expecting their first child in January so I've really enjoyed getting to know her.
After sitting on our table a couple of days I couldn't get over how creepy the pumpkin looked. We made a happy face but the green color was weird. So I painted it orange.. well I intended to just paint it orange... then I got a bit carried away and added gold glitter polka dots and mint accents.. haha.
We're coming into our first holidays away from home. Part of me is excited to start new family traditions but most of me is worried that it will be so different that I won't enjoy them. I've heard a lot of expats say the hardest time of the year is the holidays but I'm really praying God will help us to be open-minded, creative, fully depending on him for joy so that these next few months that I usually love so much can still be my favorite time of the year. I may just be naive to the woes of culture shock and away-from-home-holidays but I know my God is mighty and capable and he loves me a lot. So maybe he will help us make it a time we still look forward to. I have faith. You have to on this kind of adventure.
