Thanksgiving in China...

We've just celebrated our first Thanksgiving in China. It took us a while to "feel" like it was Thanksgiving, without all the hoop-la, parades, football and family. Thanksgiving day was a work day here for us, so Matt just had Chinese food with his students. A couple of the girl teachers and I had a small Thanksgiving meal with barbecue chicken, potatoes, even pumpkin pie; and it was quite yummy, but still not quite Thanksgiving.

But on Friday, we had planned a second meal with some other foreign teachers since many of us have Fridays off. We began the morning talking with family back home, and then I spent the day cooking cornbread stuffing, a cake, and pie crusts(all from scratch!), as well as cleaning the apartment. And Matt spent the day running errands and licking the spoon from my chocolate icing. Yes... it was beginning to feel like Thanksgiving.

By the time six o'clock came around, we were definitely in the holiday spirit (with a little help from the "autumn leaves"-scented candle from my mom and the Thanksgiving napkins from Matt's mom). We had a delicious traditional Thanksgiving dinner with stuffing, green bean casserole, potatoes, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, apple pie and cake (minus the turkey, plus some KFC buckets of chicken). We even followed dinner by watching the season's first Christmas movie!