The holidays!!

Posted by Matthew McEwen

Since we are resigned to and accepted that we are spending the first Christmas at home (in Dhaka) in seven years of being overseas. We are actually looking at it as a blessing. Plane tickets are still outrageous (750 to fly to Bangkok ... 2 hours away), packing, airports, hotels, beaches, blue water, fancy cocktails with little umbrellas, rest and relaxation....wait ... shake it off! We are staying put and are excited about it. We think E's first X-mas should be home affair and we are doing something we have not done in 7 years ... getting a Christmas tree! So we went to nursery road and strolled the mosquito infested lanes to look for a suitable replacement for the traditional tree.

Here we decide on a what we are calling a Charlie Brown tree which they 'cleaned and washed' for us for no extra charge. The tree cost 1200 taka (about 17 bucks ).

We thought that we'd be able to jump out and pick one up quickly but we nevertheless walked from nursery to nursery asking them to pull out their trees and spin them so we could get a better look. We completely baffled them sellers: " this is a good tree" , "nice tree nice tree" and "what price you pay". We tried to explain what the tree was for but that was completely lost in translation. After as much shuffling from tree to tree we decided on the one pictured. So it's Christmas in Dhaka for the new McEwen family trio. We are decorating it and enjoying beginning family traditions. We looking forward to almost 4 weeks of baby time, video editing, recording music, quilting, lounging, not working, catching up on DVDs, sleeping in, and Bangladeshi elections. Merry holidays .. more to come.