Not exactly how the Pilgrims imagined it, but...

How do you celebrate the most American of holidays when you're in China? For the last week I've been talking to my classes about it, but it's hard. We gave Thanksgiving cards (?) to the kids' classes, so I ended up with a small stack of drawings and well-wishes I can't read. (My TA claims the kids didn't do very well writing in Chinese either.) Then the adult class wanted to know all about this holiday, but as soon as I start to explain it, I realized how American all the food is. "So there's cranberries.. um, hmm, little red berries that are tart? And pumpkin... um, but a lot bigger than the pumpkins here. And turkey..." at which point one of my students grabbed her electronic translator and told everyone it was "big chicken."

Thankfully, the Holiday Inn had a Thanksgiving buffet for all our expat food cravings. The cranberry-flavored gravy was a little weird, and the sweet potatoes were definitely the Chinese type, but otherwise it was a delicious feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, clam chowder, duck, seafood, lamb stew, and everything else you could imagine. They even had a row of steaks and pork chops they would grill to order and bring to your table, but we all had our eyes on the turkey. We drank some red wine, saved room for a mini-pumpkin tart, and waddled back to our bus stop. The only thing missing was seeing the Lions lose.

I hope you all had safe, happy, and delicious Thanksgivings as well.