I hope everyone had a great holiday. Jeff and I truly had an unconventional one: first, traipsing through the amazing country of Cambodia, followed by the many experiences in Bangladesh & Calcutta, India. We spent Christmas Eve in a Bangladeshi town on the Myanmar border. Christmas is a public holiday in Bangladesh known as "Big Day", but in actuality, except for the civil servants enjoying a day off, it is like any other day & so we quietly celebrated with the closest thing to a turkey dinner we could find, chicken curry! Our New Year Eve festivities took place in an equally obscure town. A bit more exciting than Christmas, rickshaw driver carried lanterns through the dark street at the stroke of midnight, beating drums, shaking tambourines and lighting firecrackers to usher in the New Year. Not quite the traditional Western holiday season to which we have become accustomed, but at least unique!