HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Ok, it's been ages since I've updated this, but I have a pretty good excuse. My host sister, Ramneet, is going to get married in February! It's an arranged marriage and has been fixed for about a month now. Her fiances name is Harshdeep Singh and he currently lives and works in Bangalore, south India. This means that my sister will be moving to Bangalore after the wedding. I'm really going to miss her.

The preparations for an Indian wedding are very extensive and this one is happening in a very short amount of time, so everyone's very busy running around getting everything ready. There are several large parties or ceremony's that make up an Indian wedding. The Ring Ceremony (sort of like getting officially engaged in front of several hundred people and then having to take pictures with all of them) happened in the beginning of December, about a week after the match was fixed. The next major even, Shagun, doesn't happen until February 7th. That day, the brides family, minus the bride, go to the grooms family and deliver the dowry. Also that day, a close female relative of the grooms personally delivers a small amount of henna that has been blessed to the brides family. This henna is mixed in with all the henna used on the bride. Then on the 8th is the night reception/party at a big party hall (sometimes the reception is before the wedding, sometimes after, whichever is more convenient). I think that there will be about 500 plus people there. This is less then half the amount of people who attended the reception for Harmeet, Ramneets twin sister. She opted to have a larger, outside reception. That party ends sometime between 2 and 3am and then the actual wedding ceremony in a Gurudwara happens later that morning. After that the bride leaves her family and goes to live with the groom and they go off on their honeymoon a short time later. This wedding will cost somewhere around 15-16 lak (1 lak is about $2,200). The average Indian wedding costs 8-9 lak, some cost up to 1 crore ($220,000) or more!

I'm about to leave for my school trip to Goa, south India, tomorrow. It's a 6 day trip (Jan 4-10th), but about 3 for those days will be spent on train travel! I don't have anymore time to add to this, but I'll post something once I'm back!