Merry Christmas!

Dear friends and family,

Hi! Here in Mumbai it hardly feels like Christmas back in Manhattan, but the spirit of being with people I care about is the same. The air feels slightly cool (seeing people huddled in sweaters in 85+ degree weather is quite funny), and the rains are gone. 

There's so many people I want to see this, so if I can't send this to some people, could you all please show this to anyone who wants to see it? 

For most people here, Christmas is hardly a notable day, and most schools and official buildings get only one day off (and the government is even trying to remove that day as a holiday), but for the people around me, I'm working on making Christmas a bigger and bigger deal.

I've had quite the time here! Im beginning to notice more and more changes in myself as I become more and more confident as I move around here. I'm working on my Hindi more and more now, and I'm writing essays for my Hindi sir (I recently wrote my first Hindi story about my economics teacher here getting eaten by a tiger). I'm having a  great time in my school here (11th and 12th is called junior college), and I've got a lot of good friends. I'm sitting for all my lectures, and getting ok marks (grades). I'm on the college magazine committee here, and recently wrote a few articles on the stereotypes Indians have of the US. To add to more cool experiences, I'm volunteering a very low income school to teach debate to ninth standard (9th grade) and I'm busy organizing a tournament with judges next month for them to go against each other. I've asked my students to collect evidence at a local Internet cafe. I don't mean to brag, but I've seen a marked increase in English fluency and confidence in my students in the last two months (this school and my college are both allegedly English medium but teachers use quite a lot of Hindi, the national language, and Marathi, the state language of Maharashtra where I am). And finally, I'm doing yoga in the morning and I'm getting quite a lot more flexible than I was before.

Mumbai is a fantastic city! A massive city, where the roads and trains are always filled with traveled and commuters. A noisy city, caught in a clash between being an Indian city and a global one. I'm proud to call it my home. And I'm proud to feel part of a community as I meet all sorts of people walking around and trains. Sure, there's dangers to watch out for, but with some caution, one of the greatest to me is to be able to talk in Hindi with people I can't believe I'd ever have met if wasn't in India. One of the proudest things I say now (and maybe some of you won't understand this) is that I ride alone on the second class local Mumbai trains everyday.

My closest friends live in my apartment building in an extended joint family. I'm with another AFS student (from Italy) and four host siblings roughly the same age as me so there's lots of people to do things with. We've got a small Christmas tree set up, and the lights that were never taken down from Diwali (a much much bigger holiday here) and still up so we can turn them on.

Last night I saw a Marathi Kirtan, a sort of group prayer session and story telling for Hindus, and later in the night went to Catholic Christmas Eve midnight mass. This morning Andrea and I are cooking western food for a big meal of quite a few people we know.

I'm on the opposite side of the world for most of you, but I've the same side of a great holiday and hopes for a new year. Merry Christmas! I love you all and I'll see you in a few months!

-Sterling