Happy Thanksgiving!

Okay, so I actually didn't think much about Thanksgiving until the evening. Not like I forgot, or anything, but it's hard to feel excited and holiday-ish when a) there's a finance presentation to prepare before dinner, b) it's possible to walk outside without a jacket and c) you're not even 100 percent sure the hostel will be serving turkey.

The reason I could not be certain about the turkey is because the flyers simply said, "Ready for some turkey?" without actually specifying that my readiness would be satisfied. Or, they could have been planning to serve turkey and it could have caught on fire, like in the movies.

But no worries! I filled my bowl with turkey, cranberries (!), cornbread (!!), stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli, fruit salad (with dragonfruit), banana nut bread, apple pie, and pumpkin pie (!!!). I could not believe all the traditional foods they'd managed to find! I only wish I hadn't left the memory card for my camera in my laptop (grumble) because it might be difficult to visualize eating all this with chopsticks.

Yay yay yay! Thanksgiving!!!

The room was packed, mostly with exchange students, but some local students too. "What's that?" "Pumpkin pie. It's delicious." Everyone kept wanting to know how to make it; I felt awkward saying we just buy a can of the filling and plop it into a pie crust. How do people make it from scratch? Do people make it from scratch? I bet the cans grow on special pumpkin pie vines.

Anyway, after finishing I left with some friends to another hostel for more Thanksgiving dinner! This gathering was smaller and the spread of food less expansive (but no less tasty!). I ate: egg salad, mashed potatoes, Mr. Juicy orange juice, some kind of casserole-ish thing, and a slice of Sara Lee cheesecake. And I got to explain the story of the first Thanksgiving to the French students, from what I recalled from elementary school. And then someone else asked me why the Americans killed the Indians, and I said something about greedier settlers coming along later. That's how it goes, right? The same pilgrims who shared turkey with the Native Americans didn't turn around a few months later and eliminate their friends? Right?

After eating, we used crayons to trace our hands on colored paper to draw turkeys, like in kindergarten. And everyone was curious, because at first they couldn't see the resemblance between a handprint and a turkey. Or why we would trace our hand instead of just drawing a turkey free form. After writing what we were thankful for ("that I'm not not not not not a cow") we taped (or more accurately, used bits of that blue putty stuff) the turkeys/cow to the wall. Yay!

Then, in true Thanksgiving style, we sat around talking in the first floor lobby because we were too stuffed to do anything else. Ahh...wonderful.

And then we watched Love, Actually. Because it's okay to think about Christmas now. Plus that movie puts me in such a stunningly happy mood I could watch it in May and not mind in the least.