Thanksgiving, weather, basketball and homesickness. Not necessarily in that order.

Another lazy Friday at the office. It’s awesome how nothing really ever gets done on Fridays around here. As for me, I’ll definitely be leaving the office around 2:30. I have to head to the customs office to try and pick up a package from my parents that they mailed to me almost three months ago!!! Yeah, this is the one that contains the digital camera that I’ve so desperately needed over the last four months! It’ll be nice to post pictures of the important stuff, like my apartment and the complex, my neighborhood, the monkey that breaks into Winnie’s kitchen to steal food, that kind of stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving! It was a bit of a depressing Thanksgiving. You really take family holidays for granted until you’re in Asia with only a few Americans who can really appreciate the importance of the day. Nonetheless, we found a way to make do. We made reservations at this restaurant called “The Only Place.” The place may have a strange name but it was literally the only place where we could find serving turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie…they really had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The food actually wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t even the food that I missed the most. Thanksgiving is really about so much more than the extravagant dinner. It’s about sitting with your dad and football all day while your mother makes some ridiculous meal. In my house, the food was an all-day thing. There was an incredible breakfast when you woke up at 10:30 to catch the 11:05 kickoff, food and drink during both games, and then more family, dinner and drinking till the tryptophan kicks in and everyone passes out. This Thanksgiving was unique, but great because it made me really understand what I had to be thankful for. *tear*

So this weekend I will be playing in the Genie Inter-Corporate Basketball Tournament representing IndiaIT against teams from some of the other businesses in the area. Also in the league are teams from Goldman Sachs, Accenture, Siemens, General Electric, Robert Bosch and HSBC just to name a few. Really gives you an idea of the companies that have set up huge operations here in Bangalore. It should be fun. I’ve been shooting better than I have in recent memory, so I’m really looking forward to getting on the court and letting my competitive attitude rage! Matt and I are both on the team and will surely dominate. I’ll let you know what happens.

I’ve been a bit homesick lately. You’d think that it had a lot to do with Thanksgiving, or maybe the NFL season that I’ve been missing. Well, you’d be about 20% correct. But to tell you the truth, what’s really been making me miss the States has been the weather in Bangalore. It’s been cold (around 60) and slightly rainy for the past few days. You’d be surprised how well your body can recognize a familiar climate, but I’ve had this really eerie feeling that I’m actually in Chicago. My body is really quite confused, which has made me think of fall at Northwestern and how much fun everything would be. This weather is the weather that I’d walk to football games in, weather I’d walk to class in (albeit a rare occurrence), the weather I’d walk to Beta/Jake’s house in, the weather that I’d lug my saxophone in. I could go on, but you get the point.

Don’t get me wrong, I really love my time here in Bangalore and I know that it’s benefiting me in ways no other experience could. This has been the best decision of my life. But I still can’t wait to visit friends in the US and look forward to the time when I’ll be living close to my US friends on a permanent basis.

Alright, enough whining from me. Gotta go back to work, at least till 2:30.