Winter Solstice? Celebrating the holidays PC (hippy) style

I had never heard of anyone celebrating the Winter Solstice, until I met Ben Van Dusen in college.  Even then, I thought it was some weird winter celebration that only hardcore hippies celebrated (Ben was from Oregon, go figure.)  Well, the Winter Solstice came around and I just celebrated it for the first time (officially).  So maybe it is a normal holiday.  Or maybe I’m just a hardcore hippy now.  My hair is certainly long enough.  I’m dirty most of the time.  Damn.  Whatever the case, it has its perks because our Winter Solstice celebration was amazing.

Lately, a few of us volunteers have been trying to perfect our Indian food cuisine.  So since we had all these spices from previous cooking trials, we thought it would be a good idea to cook Indian for the holidays.  It came out amazing (oddly enough, it was this time that I did not help cook…maybe I need a new hobby).  Samosas, pumpkin curry, dhal…the meal was heaven.  The night was also crowned with a single malt 16 year whiskey (sorry mom and dad for being drunk when you called, but it was really good liquor).  A good pinot grigio was there, as well as locally made mango liquor and locally made chocolate mint liquor.  Top all this off with some hookah, grape mint flavor, and you have yourself one hell of a Winter Solstice.

Isn’t Peace Corps great?  Although I miss family and friends back home, it’s times like these that remind me of how great a life I lead.  It seems like I’ve learned so many things here in the Peace Corps and experienced so many different aspects of life that I had never knew existed before.  Who knew being a hippy was so much fun?