Thanksgiving Traditions!

Thanksgiving, the turkiest time of the year!

The turkey we made was amazing, and the stuffing, which was my creation, came out even better!
As you know,  we have a yearly tradition [or a little secret] that keeps all the kiddos occupied while the turkey roasts in the oven.  The party was at my house this year [through popular vote] so I had to choose the coloring page, which was about Pilgrim Clothing, and it was really fun coloring, and we even had a contest! Whoever had the best picture in their age category got to dress the others [or themselves up] in vintage Pilgrim clothing, thanks to the local thrift store! It was fun, and after a while, even the adults got decked up in petticoats and blouses.
For the coloring page I used, click here

After this, it was time for the puzzle. As you know, each year the host has to select a puzzle for the little rascals, err cutie pies, and this year I chose a USA map puzzle. It was great fun, and  the children finished it all by themselves, as long as you include help from the child at heart, AKA me!
Right now you can find it at a great price on Amazon! Right here

And I know you guys have been waiting for the recipe that I promised. My grandmother's secret recipe was actually featured on Food Network! My grandmother sent it in,and it was used there! There are minor changes, but the turkey still looks delectable!  Hats off to Giada for this!
You can see the recipe here: Food Network Turkey

And while Gram Gram won't budge on the stuffing, Food Network has also come up with  an amazing sutffing recipe, which I used and received many compliments on.
You may see this here:Sandra Lee's Amazing Recipe
This is also cheap, and frugal, and it will really knock the socks off your guests!

Crowdtap!

Crowdtap is an AMAZING WEBSTIE! I absolutely love the concept of it! It's fun, easy, and its a great place to share your opinions. From Sample and Shares [like from Old navy], to Quick Hits, and Missions, I love them! I assure you, you'll love it!

Please sign up here: Crowdtap Sign Up
You'll love it! I tell you!

Death... Part 1

Behind every spurious curtain of hope, accomplishment and success resides the incessant slayer of death. Inconspicuous beneath relationships, milestones and firsts, are goodbyes, endings and tragic lasts. If life is a journey, the destination is death.  A confounding aspect, the opposite of birth, death lies hidden, waiting. Some say for every death someone is born, but the tradeoff is never equal. The day Neil Armstrong died, Snooki's son was born.  Death is a stealthy stalker, death is omnipresent. Some people must meet death early, some later than others, no one can escape it. One of the greatest ironies of life is that you can not live without dying, nor can you die without living. 

The somewhat paradoxical aspects of death have always terrified me, even as a child believing the deceased person had just entered a deep, long peaceful sleep. As a young child, I was afraid of a plethora of other things,  thunder, spiders, heights and the like, but  even to this day, I am still wary of the dark shadow lurking around, never leaving.  From hovering around me as I panicked on my first roller coaster to retreating to the corner during my elementary school graduation, from each  great success to every humiliating failure, it was always waiting, slowly following me till the day it could conquer my soul, trudging around me, impatient for a life to take, staying only to snatch away my youth, my memories, my identity, so all that could remain would be my lifeless carcass, yet another one of its victims.  

I clearly remember the day I overcame the majority of this fear, though it still does return to haunt me on dark stormy nights or when the floor boards creak despite my being alone. It was November, late into fall, and the last of the splendid, vibrant tumbling leaves had long since traversed to the soggy, barren ground, leaving only the occasional twig snap. The wind howled , sending hollow  chills up my quivering spine. I stamped through the damp leaf piles, heaving my loaded backpack along with me as I dragged home. 

As I plowed through the door to my house, I immediately felt something wrong  with the atmosphere. Despite dropping to the negatives in the morning the house was unheated, and there were no lights on, though the diminishing sunlight illuminated only enough to  just barely see my hand in front of my face. Kicking off my shoes, I closed the door behind me, shuddering as it omnously creaked close. My backpack landed on the floor with a thud, and the inauspicious noises hung in the dead air, no sign of life anywhere in the house. I looked around. Everything was the same as I'd left it, the same jacket hanging from the chair, the dirty, accumulating pile of  mismatched socks towering near the stair case, the same scatter of books on the table, my science textbook lying open to the same page as yesterday, everything was the same, chaos, but normal chaos for our family. 

"Mom, you there?" I said tentatively, the words suspended in my throat, afraid to seep out.  No response. That was until I heard it. Faint at first, it grew, until it became clearly. Someone was sobbing wildly upstairs. 

Uninvited Intervention

Snuggling against the frayed wool of my fuzzy pink blanket, my head rattling against the icy car window, I drifted in and out of a volatile slumber. For the last hour we'd been meandering all over highways, parkways, and very abstruse ways, trying to configure the indecisive GPS as it constantly rerouted. Attempting to arrive where my mother was ready to all but ace a job interview she'd been fretting over the last two months, we had set out on this trek.  I took a leisurely moment to open my eyes and scrutinize her crisp corporate couture.  From her sleek pearl earrings to her twice-starched blue shirt to her special  black leather stiletto heels,  she was certainly dressed for the occasion, which was scheduled at 9:30 sharp, shockingly early for the Monday of the long weekend off from school. My mom's fate was literally in my dad's adept driving hands. 

   "We're here!" She suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the sign inscribed Medical Plaza.

      I exhaled a deep breath of relief.  We weren't late after all. We had made it to this dilapidated institution.  The upcoming dilemma was parking, but I decided to leaving scouring for a space big enough to accommodate our SUV to my dad, who had generously agreed to drive us to this decrepit and obscure location.I bent to pick up my handy-dandy novel, from which I had read approximately 0 pages during the trip, but then was flung back into my seat as the car steeply veered. 

       "Maybe there's parking over there," Dad said, gesturing towards what lied ahead. I peeked over the dashboard at an oblique lamp leading into a dark tunnel, which disappeared into the ground and turned at a bend. As my dad revved the engine, I caught a glimpse of light. Except this wasn't right, sunlight definitely did nor belong at the end of this tunnel.

          "Wait," I began to utter, but it was too late. The car swerved and screeched down the ramp and out of the tunnel in to the blinding warm light, horns blaring behind us, where cars zoomed  by, feet away from us unaware of the exit seconds away. Unable to reverse, horns blaring behind us, we were compelled to speed up and glide over the immense highway, no exits coming up for miles. 

      "Oh well," mom sighed. As we helplessly flowed with the stream of vehicles, now more like a trickle, unable to turn back, it struck 10. I on the other hand, grinned when I saw a sign above the road. If fate didn't want her to take the interview, who was I to argue? Besides, fate seemed to have something else in mind, with me as its trustworthy corespondent.  

          "So....now that we're on the road there," I began, " Let's go to NYC!"

        And fate just wanted us to do that...

 

A Day As a Giant

A significant part of my childhood travels was given to the land of the rising sun, where I spent my time hoping that the 13 hour time difference would keep me awake continuously while I roamed around Hikarigoaka with my family.  Luckily, my jetlag did last until I stuffed it into my suitcase where it became contaminated and its effects were reversed. Unfortunately, that meant I would become oblivious to the world for two weeks after my departure from Japan.   The very same day of our arrival, we took a tour of Tokyo and cruised around my uncle's neighborhood, surveying the lines of traffic on the way; we could have walked faster to the supermarket.  Our entire group, my parents, brother, grandparents, uncle and I had decided to come here because my grandfather had become old and he was not glowing with health.  This might have been the last time I saw him. On the last full day of our vacation, we were dreading our separation. We remained melancholic until my uncle surprised us with a trip to Tobo World Square. We got dressed eagerly, cognizant of the attraction's immense beauty which my uncle had mentioned earlier.  We boarded into the recently scratched rental car, hoping that our luck would change. First, it was the car. My uncle was driving when we struck the side of the road and scratched the car badly, striping part of the dark blue paint off its exterior. Then the mosquitoes started stalking us, and for the past week, we were tormented by them everywhere we traveled.  Today, we were anticipating another horrible accident due to the dust collecting on our bug repellent.  As we rolled out onto the road, I noticed the lack of traffic on the road; we were driving over a highway alone, without another car in sight.  We emerged into the city of Nikko two hours later. My uncle, who was unaccustomed to driving such long distances, stopped the car and scrutinized the preparations for the annual summer festival. After the quick break, we navigated through the streets until I saw the Eiffel Tower and the Tokyo Skytree standing right next to each other.  I was immediately bewildered.

          “Is that Tobo World Square?” I asked, glancing sideways at the buildings.

“That’s where you’ll see the entire world,” said my uncle, answering an invisible person in front of the car instead of me.

I was completely perplexed by the sight of the two structures, smoke was billowing out of the Tokyo Skytree, and the Eiffel Tower had become slightly more distant than I had expected it to be. That perplexity subsided when I caught a glimpse of the entire miniature world as we traveled around the mountainous hills. When we finally became reached Tobo World Square, we were no longer anxious to sight see, but to diminish that horrible odor which drifted in the year. All of us wrinkled our noses and we about to complain about that unmistakable smell when my uncle said, “There are few farms nearby, and this was the best way to get some money for the government.”

“Okay, let’s go travel around the world in-” I scanned the sign and said, “Three hours.”We remembered about this being our final day together and secretly hoped that those two hours would last forever. After the usual quarrel about who would buy the tickets ended, we set off into the viewing area, binoculars in our hands.  I peered through them,   inspecting the miniscule people and the intricate details.  My mother pointed to the ‘Japan’ section, equally excited. We spent one hour examining the exquisite replicas. We were finished with Africa, Japan, Australia, South America, and we’re halfway through Europe when we are compelled to stop for my grandparents’ sake. We located a restaurant and we helped ourselves to peculiar tasting ice cream when I realized that my grandpa had disappeared. It was drizzling outside, but we disregarded it, and then I spotted him. I broke into a sprint and squeezed through castles, dodged other tourists, and skidded across a few tiles.

“Nana Bhai, are you okay?” I asked, suddenly annoyed at how he was wasting our time.

“I was just looking for the Taj Mahal; I want to see it again. It is what I want to see,” my grandfather said, emphasizing each word as he translated it to English, trying to explain something I clearly understood. He grabbed my hand and we ambled back to the restaurant, chatting about Nana Bhai’s previous visits to Japan. After this, we looked around the ‘Asia’ section and disappointed my grandfather by revealing that the Taj Mahal was not as enchanting as he had expected. Our eyes simultaneously fell on the Great Wall of China. It was a mammoth fence which lined most of the Asia section and numerous tourists were perched at the top of it, seemingly floating above our heads.  I realized that Japan was not the most diverse country, and that we were individualists in a sea of identical people. I glanced at the tiny people along the sides of the Great Wall of China. They all were nonconformists; they were different from the rest of the others, no two people alike. To them, their spectators are gargantuan, and every day they remain giants. That day, we were the giants, towering over the realistic replicas, and we had seen their world. We had seen the entire world and the sudden truth hit me. This was more than a mere attraction; it fulfilled every person’s last wish. Among these people was my grandfather, and he had seen the world. From atop the Great Wall of China, he could see past Tobo World Square and his view continued to the horizon where the sun had started to set.   I silently begged it to never rise, but it is the way things work, the sun will rise and the sun would set eternally, going around the world each day, finding its way to every corner of the Earth. Each day, I wake up and I don’t live my life as if it is going to reach its end soon, but instead, I recollect my memory of that one sunset, despite there being so many. It’s a mystery how, but somehow, it is responsible for bringing an end to our vacation. The sun is like everyone’s lives, eventually it will have to set. Even in the land of the rising sun.

Me, Myself, and I

Me? I'm Wamia, and I'm the original ABCD-- American Born Confused Desi and this is my blog that will follow me through my  nothing-but-average teen days spent trying to clear this perplexity as I talk about things that dominate my very confusing life, such as frugality, school,  balancing both of my cultures ,  and  life in general.

Myself? I live in a cultural melting pot,  go to advanced classes, love reading books, am a food junkie, am tightfisted and proud, and love Mexican food.   I live with my family, and love  to think that I'm the head of the herd, which I  may just not be. 

I? I am paranoid [don't ask], frugal, intelligent, and downright awesome. My name means rain and I'm a true Desi, even though I live in America.  I also like photography, and various other things, which you'll discover later.