Thanksgiving(s)

It is early Sunday afternoon and this is the first time in a couple of days I've been able to sit down and write a blog entry. We've been celebrating Thanksgiving for a million days straight now. And it was so wonderful.

On Friday, we didn't have to teach. In our contract, our team gets one day off for Thanksgiving. According to the university, that day doesn't have to be on the actual Thanksgiving day, of course.

On Friday evening we all cooked numerous American dishes for a big Thanksgiving feast in Joelle's apartment. We invited the people from the Foreign Affairs Office, other Chinese English teachers, and the other foreign teachers from Japan and the Philippines.

It was one of the best meals ever. We all did really well cooking good food with very limited resources. It was about as traditional Thanksgiving could get, even though we didn't have turkey or meat. And our guests loved it! They were taking pictures the whole time, and they were enthralled by everything--even the little paper napkins from America that said "Happy Thanksgiving!" They took some home as souvenirs. It was just a very pleasant evening and we got to serve them in a special way.

Then on Saturday at noon, we went to another university in the city for our international fellowship's all-day Thanksgiving celebration. We gathered in the "Foreign Experts" building on campus for lunch and dinner. In between the amazing meals, for which we all brought food, we played Frisbee, football, cards, etc. There were about 60 people there. The countries represented were America, China, Mexico, Germany, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Nigeria, West Africa, and South Korea. So we ate food from a lot of different places. There was also good conversation, and I even got to use my very rusty German.

So that is about all we've been doing this weekend--cooking, riding on the city buses, eating, and hanging out with cool people.

I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving!