Remembrance and Celebration

All week I have been feeling strangely patriotic and confused with September 11 coming up. It is just so.. weird that I am on the other side of the world and as far as I can tell no one really knows and cares about an event I think it's safe to say partially defines us as a country. But then I see it from their point of view and why would they? Something that happened nine years ago, close to as far as you can get from this place, and didn't directly affect them. I have spent the last few days thinking and remembering and respecting those who died in the Twin Towers, and what I saw of the speech Obama gave on September 10 was one of the only times I have been absolutely transfixed by the news. Then he moved to the new bill he wants passed about cutting taxes for companies who employ Americans instead of outsourcing, and I literally couldn't look away. Not being in the United States has made me much more interested in our country, probably because I'm looking at it from a completely different point of view now. 

September 11 for me was actually a day of celebration. From eight a.m. I was consumed with celebrating Ganesha's birthday. It began with an hour and a half-long sit  in front of a foot-tall idol of Ganesha for Pooja (prayer). It was very similar to the fire ceremony I did in Crestone for Ex Ed, except it was a holiday for the men to pray and participate much more than the women. I mostly just sat in the back taking the occasional picture or video. In the evening I (unnecessarily got all dressed up in gold jewelry and traditional Indian party clothes our family friends came over to pray at our altar and everyone loved their new Indian. 

We all went over to our close family friends' house who are the sweetest people and watched A Beautiful Life. I was astonished when one of the adults asked how Jews got chosen to go wherever they were going. They asked me to explain the background of the World War II movie, which struck a feeling in me similar to 9/11. Like, how could they not know everything about this? Maybe it's an American thing or because India wasn't involved in the war at all... just odd. Although, some seemed to know the basics of the war and actually quite a bit about it, I would like to thank World History class for coming in handy.