Christmas Day

My Christmas was a quiet one, as are most of my holidays here without many friends and lack of family here but I still try to make the best of it. :) I spent the morning video chatting with family and in the evening I went out with Sandeep again. This time we met at another well known mall in the city, GVK Mall. Sandeep was running a little late that day, so I took that time to walk around the shops, take in the decorations and do some people watching.

As expected on a weekend or holiday, the mall was packed with people

 Notice the number of people in the pictures and not one of them is holding a shopping bag from any of the shops inside the mall. This is the norm here, people come to mall to "hang out" rather then shop. The locals usually doing their shopping at other stand alone shops as they get much better deals there. Makes me wonder how these shops stay in business though... 

 I found the decorations more similar to US culture at this mall

 A huge fish tank in the middle of the mall

 After Sandeep arrived, we grabbed some dinner. I forgot to take the picture before we started to eat, but you get the point. We had some sev puri (one of my favs)...

 ...and some special Pav Bhaji. The bread is cut into small pieces and seasoned which makes it "Special." Both were delish!!!

Followed by dinner we treated ourselves to some Cream Stone... India's version of Cold Stone 

 Sandeep enjoying his vanilla ice cream with crushed Kit Kats. My bad on taking only this picture of him while he was mid-bite.

I had caramel with nuts ice cream with crushed Kit Kat added to mine. Yum!! 

All in all, I was happy for the company and enjoyed hanging out Sandeep. Sadly, he left to go back to the States two days later. Hopefully I will get to see more of my new friend back in the states. :)