Holiday time

We haven't been taking pictures recently, but that's 'cause I forgot the camera when we went to our Thanksgiving party last night.

We don't get time off for Thanksgiving here. In fact, we almost missed it entirely. Because it's not a national holiday (obviously) with several days off and a big tradition of getting together with family and feasting, it's not on the tip of everyone's tounge, asking, "so, what're you doing for Thanksgiving," we don't remember to ask, "what day is it?" We did spend part of last week working out when Thanksgiving started. Now that the time change has happened, the east coast of the U.S. is thirteen hours behind us and so on. So it's even trickier to call (do we stay up late or get up early).

But we did have a fun time with new friends. There's a restaurant in the north side of town that's a favorite of ex-pats (really good pancakes, I'm told). And they'd make you a turkey with all the side dishes. So Marie and I helped collect the food (the bird felt like twenty pounds, but it was certainly huge) and take it to Daniel's (a new teacher in Marie's school) apartment.

So we had turkey, and mashed potatoes, gravy, and broccoli; and thanks to Marie's quick thinking and spotting a Wellman's store (which's an importer of little-seen food stuffs, like Stovetop stuffing) we had stuffing, too.

There was the usual crowd of people. Katie, Rowan, Kat, Cindy, Fay, and Vera, all of whom we've seen at most of our get-togethers, but Marie works with half of them. Daniel and his friend Gina, Melissa brought what Marie called the Kojen mascot, Kiki, a hyper little poodle-terrier thing. Dgie (pronounced Gee, I think) brought her son Josh, so we had one cute little four-year old running around to make it seem like a family holiday. Josh and the turkey are the two things I would've photographed if I could've.

But there were almost twenty people there, and we went through almost all of the bird; the pounds of mashed potatoes were gone in the first serving, and we even had pie. Though I thought we should've had two for that group, the restaurant sliced the pie into sixteen slices so it came out just right 'cause I don't think the Chinese people were quite as excited by it. Interested, yes, but it wasn't nearly the same thing for them.

And just to make it seem like Chistmas is coming, Marie and I went toy shopping afterwards. She wanted some board games to play with friends so we went to a Toys "R" Us where we found these big foam swords, axes, and hammers that I almost bought. We did wack each other with them for a minute, just to get it out of our systems. I would've taken a picture of those, too.

But it was fun to poke through toys and see the new Lego and Star Wars stuff. We just bought a couple of sedate games, one with dice and a big dominoes set, 'cause we're old. But it was fun to laugh at the toys and wish I could bring myself to buy a huge Lego set. I did almost buy Cluedo (Clue in Chinese) 'cause it has everything in English and Chinese, so I could've learned to say "Professor Plum in the library with the pipe," in Chinese. And the uses for those kinds of phrases are just limitless.

So, our next project is to get ready for Christmas, because we're having it here, at our place. So at least there'll be plenty of photos 'cause I can't forget the camera. And at the same time, we're trying to figure out where to go for New Year's. In the ex-pat community it's called Chinese New Year, 'cause it's a few weeks after January 1st. But it's a big deal 'cause we get more than a week off work, apparently. So we're trying to get outta town and see some other place. But just like the states, we need to be buying tickets (for the train, tho') now (and probably last month) 'cause everyone wants to be somewhere else.

So that's all the news from Lake Woebegone. We hope everyone's having great holidays, too.