Watching the snow

So it's Christmas technically. Europeans seem to celebrate on the evening of the 24th. I'm spending my Christmas in my apartment, all alone - intentionally actually. I received two invitations - one to spend Christmas in Germany with S's family (his family is just so nice); another invitation was to spend Christmas in London. Honestly, it was very difficult to turn down both invitations because I love traveling and I like Christmas - its celebrated so grandly yet not grandly. If that makes any sense!

The thing is, where I grew up, among my friends who do celebrate Christmas - the gifts were always big. I know my friends saved up their allowances for weeks or even months to buy Christmas gifts. The strange thing is, among my friends here, they don't give very big gifts. A box of gourmet tea, a hand knitted beanie, a huge box of marzipan chocolate - these are the kinds of gifts I notice people exchange. Maybe big gifts are more for kids? I really don't know, but I am intrigued by the difference. It's very traditional here - spending quality time with family. Unlike how my family spends Diwali - with a good 100 people visiting, then we visiting other people. Sometimes I do wish we spent Diwali in a nice and quiet manner, just the family. Would be so different. For once my mom would be out of the kitchen. A family trip for Diwali would be nice. Incidentally my family is going to Singapore for Christmas so that my younger sister can burn a hole in her pocket at Boxing Day sale :) I'd love to follow, but Norway and Malaysia are not neighbouring countries :)

I'm a little regretful over not traveling for Christmas this year because the past two years I never stayed in Oslo. But its kind of a bittersweet regret as its the right thing to do - staying home, bumming around, catching up on laundry, watching heaps of movies, burrowing under the blanket and sipping tea, eating a little bit of lebkuchen (this stuff is addictive), putting away clean laundry, vacuuming, cooking healthy dishes... all that stuff. I'm just having some quiet, me time. Hopefully when 2010 starts, I will be fully recharged to go back to battle.

Honestly 2009 was very challenging, but I did learn a lot about myself, about people, about life in general. The big lesson was: life goes on. Sometimes we think something is just impossible like getting used to change or just accepting it. The very idea of waking up the next day seems not possible at all. But, the next thing you know, its 3 months later and you don't feel so bad at all. Life does go on. Time on the other hand does not really heal... it just makes you forget. But when you do remember, you can still feel those feelings, however dull they are.

I hope all of you have a good Christmas and New Year (2010). I'm looking forward to a lot of things but I don't want to jinx them by writing them down ;) If only wishes were horses..