Born Into Brothels - not us, the film

So, it was my second time hosting the girls during Christmas nonetheless. This time, we decided that due to our overscheduled holiday lives, we couldn't possibly fit in time to read a book, but would instead squeeze in three or four hours to chit chat and eat with one another.

Everyone brought food over. I made some goi cuon - cold vietnamese spring rolls, Suse brought some delicious German Christmas cookies and Heidi slaved all afternoon over some according-to-her-sister "simple" crab cakes. Megan brought mushrooms stuffed with meatless sausage - very tasty, but you'll never fool the few of us who do still eat meat.

Amy made her first appearance to the club and was celebrated with much drinking of wine. This was followed by stories of how some group members had met her husband before Amy while he was still pining away for she-who-was-not-yet-in-the-lovely-state-of-Indiana.

There was quite a lot of debate over which movie we would actually watch. Betsy had brought over "Talk to Her" which she loves and despite having seen it who knows how many times previously, would watch it again. Kim, while not in attendance, was really pulling for "What the Bleep Do we Know." She had watched it at the Vickers in Three Oaks, MI, raved about it at the October meeting and no one else had watched it. So we started off with that, but after five minutes of our spontaneous reinactment of Mystery Science Theater 2000, we knew it had to go. Sorry Kim. (Apparently, all of the club's dirty little secrets will be revealed on the blog)

We then moved on to Born into Brothels which proved to be a winner. A truly amazing film. Put it on your Netflix queue asap.

The premise sounds cheesy - white go-getter, photographer woman risks dangers of India to give cameras to kids of prostitutes in the redlight district of Calcutta. Kids embrace woman and cameras, woman moved by strength of kids, woman promotes kids through their photos thus changing their lives.

But seriously, it's wonderful.