Halloween - Election Night - Deepawali

Hey everyone!

It’s been a couple of weeks since I updated and lots of exciting things have happened so I thought I should probably update y’all.

Halloween, to everyone who isn’t from the States, is not a big deal. It was definitely an insistence of culture shock for me. Halloween is not my favorite holiday, but I’m used to pumpkins and costumes everywhere, candy, and lots of black and orange. No one dressed up on campus or anything. There were scary stories being told in one of the residence halls (or colleges as they’re called at Jacobs) and a costume party the day after Halloween, but nothing on Halloween night. Fortunately the Blue House came through with pumpkin carving (apparently the Resident Supervisor had to travel way out into the country and buy the pumpkins from a farmer because they aren’t sold in stores here) and a scary movie so old that it was funny. I was feeling pretty awful Halloween night so I carved a pumpkin then went to bed around 11. It was rather odd. For those of you in the States, I’m still waiting for pictures of a good, old fashioned Halloween. ;)

The next big thing here was Election Night. The US elections were a huge deal on the Jacobs campus and in Germany in general. There were several parties I heard about and considered going to, but in the end I decided to go to a party at the Yellow House (another university owned house). My friends Kate, Alissa, and I were the only two Americans there and at one point someone said how exciting it was that there were “real Americans” there. I got there about 8:30 pm (2:30 pm Kentucky time). We watched internet videos of things related to the election like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and JibJab’s “Time for Some Campaignin’”.

At midnight here the first polls started to close in the US so we switched to CNN. Incredibly, Kentucky was the first state reported on, so that was pretty darn cool. However it was a red state which didn’t make any of us at the party happy. We spent the next 5 hours glued to CNN, impressed with the holograms (that was just cool), the graphics, and that map that allows you to see what each state was called. We were all thrilled when Obama was declared the President Elect. Around 5 am the buses started running again so my friend Kate and I ended up getting home around 5:15 in the morning. I went to bed around 6 am after watching part of McCain’s concession speech. It was just an incredible night. I’m still sad I wasn’t able to get my absentee ballot to vote properly and to be in the States for this historic election, but it was pretty darn cool to be in Germany for this. Everyone here loves Obama. People I don’t know are still coming up to me and congratulating me on Obama’s victory. It’s a bit surreal.

Election night was Tuesday and Sunday the Jacobs campus celebrated Deepawali, or the Hindu Festival of Lights. Deepawali is a Hindu festival that celebrates the triumph of Good over Evil and the goddess Loxmi. To celebrate the Indian and Nepali students had a day where they taught anyone who wanted to learn some yoga-mediatation, pottery, painted henna on people, made rangoli designs (colorful, symmetric designs made out of colored sand or rice), gave a presentation on why they celebrate Deepawali, performed Indian and Nepali folk dances and songs, and finished it by cooking huge amounts of traditional food for everyone. It was the first time that I tried curry and liked it. I also really like the dahl surprisingly (a kind of spicy soup). I did not like the coconut chutney. Oh well. I think that’s an acquired taste. I did get henna painted on my hand and arm and am loving it. It’s way better than the henna you can get on vacations.

I’ll put some more of my adventures in another post. I hope that everything is going well with yall and that your Halloweens and Election nights were happy.

Love,
Bits







My friends Alina from Romania, Maria from Trinidad, and I at a restaurant













My friend Maria and I dressed up for a concert for Gambia

My freshly henna-ed arm - don't worry it'll fade in 2 - 3 weeks