Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in China! All week I had been teaching about Thanksgiving and going over the traditions and food, so I was very excited to finally make the dinner. We had the option of going into Chongqing and enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner provided by many of the hotels for foreigners, but we decided to save $30 and make our own! I also wanted to embrace the fact that I'm living in China, and this is not a holiday that is celebrated over here, so it just wouldn't be the same....and that's ok! We actually managed to have a pretty complete dinner thanks to Sean's (another foreign teacher here) mom, who sent him supplies for cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie! I was in charge of mashed potatos and carrots, and yes that is a wok I'm using to boil the potatos :)

I also tried to make whipped cream for the pumpkin pie, but there's no cream in China. So I used milk, and it was a good effort, but the thickness just didn't stay!

There are no turkeys in China so we got a roast duck instead, which tasted exactly like ham, but it was good! The rest of fixin's were all present! 

It was an awesome dinner, so good in fact that we've decided to have an "American" type meal once a month! Speaking of holidays, I managed to find some Christmas decorations at Wal-mart here, so my wall is colorfully lit up and I have a mini Christmas tree in my living room! Tis the season!

In other news, I've finally made all of my travel plans for the Chinese New Year! I'll be travelling for about a month, spending 10 days in Thailand, a week in India, and another 10 days in between Malaysia and Singapore. I can't wait! Let me know what souveniers you want....no promises on sneaking the Taj into my suitcase ;)