Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American (U.S. and Canadian) holiday, so Thursday of this week was just another Thursday here in the UK. In fact, because of their class schedules, students had very little enthusiasm for celebration until Friday evening. So that plan was set several weeks in advance.

We let each student invite one guest, and most did. Some were Brits, and others were other international students, including some from Germany, Portugal, Denmark, and Tanzania. Fortunately we have the church hall available to us, so we had enough space for everyone.

Guests begin to arrive.

We could have easily had 40 or more, but a number of people who usually are invited (neighbors, some professors from the university, people who do business with us, etc.) weren't able to make it. We could have invited more, but we thought it best to keep things as small as possible so that cooking abilities were not overstretched.

We managed to find a couple of small frozen turkeys in the grocery store this week, which was not a sure bet, as turkey is generally only on the British menu at Christmas. Fortunately, the Christmas stock is just starting to come in at most grocery chains now.

Preparations under way!

Some things, like pumpkin pie filling, just aren't to be found here at all (Mary and a student had to prepare un-carved pumpkins we'd been storing since Halloween in the old fashioned way.) Most of our guests had never been to a Thanksgiving before -- nor had they ever tasted things like "stuffing" or creamed corn casserole or pumpkin pie.

Students signed up to prepare various parts of the meal, and there were many exchanges of email back home, seeking Mom's special recipe for this, or Grandma's special recipe for that. Mary assigned preparation and oven times because of limited kitchen space. Everything was carefully scheduled, and everything turned out amazingly well!

Let's eat!

One of our students celebrated her 22nd birthday on Friday, and two others had 21st birthdays, either within the past couple weeks or coming up next week. Mary also had a birthday this month, so we counted that as 21 again. All of the November birthdays were recognized.

Birthdays -- everyone a 20-something

Of course, there was no football to watch after the meal (or at least no American football). But at least no one has to get up early the next morning to go Christmas shopping -- Friday is not "black" here.