Christmas Celebration

SGB and I (now in Palolem, in Goa) went to a midnight mass at the big church in the larger town nearby.  Unfortunately, almost the entire thing was in Konkani, the local language here (the few exceptions occured during the sermon, when the priest frequently said "you are ugly" and "you are beautiful".  Between that and the fact that the service didn't really get under way until about 11:30 (despite a scheduled start time of 11), I spent most of it trying to go to sleep while Sarah kept pinching me to keep me awake.  Also, there wasn't much to get the congregation engaged in the service.  All singing was done by an abysmally out-of-tune voice, guitar, and keyboard ensemble, who had the misfortune of having their mistakes amplified and broadcast throughout the church and to the people sitting outside.  We just got to sit, stand, or kneel whenever everyone else did.  At about midnight a tremendous cacophony of exploding fireworks erupted just outside, but seemed unconnected to the actual service, as the priest kept right on talking.  Beforehand we'd decided that we didn't want to wait until 1:30 to leave, and had asked the trishaw driver to come pick us up at 12:30, so, gratefully, we snuck out as soon as possible after the end of the sermon.  Of course, between the time we'd arrived and then, the seating area set up outside the front doors of the church had entirely filled up, so we had to walk by several hundred people on our way out.  I'm glad I was able to make it to a Christmas service of some sort, but it would have been nice if it had been earlier.

 

We'd wanted to see if there were any Christmas parties happening along the beach, and ended up walking all the way down to the end where a big bash was going on.  It wasn't particularly Christmas oriented, but afforded a good opportunity for dancing.  Somehow that almost always wakes me up.

 

Things here have been terrific so far, if sometimes a bit exhausting.  India's really cool.  More later.