Merry Christmas!

...If you're into that sort of thing.

Clock just turned to 00:00 here, which means it's 25/12! (It's been tough adjusting to the 31 month 12 day calendar)

We're all moved in at the new place where we'll be spending the rest of our time here, but before we left our old place we had a raging party to celebrate the end of three days of conferences. We had pretty much given up on anyone showing up at 3AM, but then all our new friends beat down the door and we ended up partying until 7AM or so. The guest list consisted half of people from the New York office that we had met during our stopover there and half of people we met during the conference. Everyone was serving themselves, so the "house boy" just sat in a corner looking extremely tired until we insisted that he go sleep in the unused bedroom.

We found the gym today, and it is really nice. There is AC, 3 walls are windows and the other one is a mirror, free weights, a bench to press, a nautilus machine and a partridge in a pear tree! A guard came in while we were working out and asked us our flat number. That's what I eventually understood him to be asking, anyway. Hinglish is about as hard to understand as straight Hindi sometimes, especially when one's brain doesn't know which to listen for. After he left we laughed at the suspicion we imagined him having; a young American couple sneaking into not only the country, not only the secure condo complex, but also the gym! Another guard with both more hat bling and more familiarity with English came in after that and told us where we need to go to get resident cards. We are lucky to have extra passport photos, so we'll be able to get the cards tomorrow.

Christmas exists mostly in hotels here, but we are excited to have been invited to a party tomorrow at one of our new friends' house.

We'll let you know how it goes! Stay tuned for pictures!