Happy Diwali

It's always strange and a little overwhelming to spend holidays alone while you're away from home. Overwhelming in terms of feeling homesick and wanting certain things that you only get when you're at home. It wasn't as bad when I was away at school because I was still in the USA and I had a car and people spoke English and I knew where to find the things that I wanted. Vietnam obviously does/has none of those. Yet it's not as bad as I thought it would be. There's a vegetarian restaurant near my guesthouse so I didn't starve over the past couple of days. I managed to get home in time to shower and get everything set up. I'm sad I didn't have incense or a candle to light because I had no idea where to find those things or the time to search for them. Also, I started walking again on Monday and that was also the start of induction week at ILA. I'll write about that in a later post. 

I'm lucky that I'm living in guesthouse because there's a girl, Mai, who cleans the rooms. So I arrived home at 5:30 to a clean room. I showered, found clean and appropriate clothes, found a Mahalaxmi Aarti on YouTube, figured out which direction was east and settled in. I sang along to the Aarti, said a prayer and that's how I celebrated my Diwali. I also have some Vanilla Coffee candy and that was my bit of sweet for the evening. I had pastry in my room but I figured there's egg in there so I skipped that.

Have a Happy Diwali everyone! I'm off to dinner! Promise to take pictures of the amazing things I'm gonna eat. :D