A Short Letter Home

Give thanks

Sheesh, almost a week into December and I still haven't blogged about Thanksgiving? How lame. But then again, there's not much to report. On Thursday we went to "The Farm"--a little place that's about 18 km outside of town. It's a place that does agricultural development, so they have all sorts of test plots and things like that. There are a few foreign families and a bunch of local folks who live there and they always throw a good party. There were a number of us "city folks" invited. There was our family, our neighbors Joan and Michael, the lady who runs the neighborhood English corner, a couple of students who help out in the aforementioned corner, and another foreign teacher in town named Emily. The English corner folks traveled separately, so us foreigners coordinated efforts so we could take a mien bao che--one of those little vans that look like a loaf of bread. Actually, Michael stayed home since he felt obliged to offer the regular Thursday night English corner on campus.

As is typical, the folks at the farm had quite a spread. There were the typical turkey, stuffing and sweet potato dishes, as well as a few unusual offerings such as pumpkin with curry and lumpia made with sweet potato. As we were eating, Emily and I tried to explain what constitutes a "typical" Thanksgiving dinner to Joan, who's British. It was a difficult task, as one thing we've learned out here is that different regions of the U.S. have different staples in their meals. It seemed quite odd to me that we weren't serving mashed potatoes with our turkey, for example, while our Southern hosts served up heaping helping of sweet potato. After discussing some of the regional variants, Emily finally distilled the typical Thanksgiving dinner to turkey, accompanied by dishes that are pretty much bland and sweet. With a football game playing afterward.

So dinner was nice and tasty. Afterwards, we all gathered around and had the obligatory "say what you're thankful for" session. I was mostly thankful for all the nice folks we had met out here. It seemed odd that I was in a room full of people, most of whom I had known less than a year, yet felt right at home among good friends. I think there's something about being a stranger in a strange land that helps one make connections quicker. Or maybe I was just blessed to fall in with the right group of people. I don't know. Anyway, about a third of us voiced our thanksgivings, and then, all too quickly, it was over. Since we weren't in America, most folks had to get back to work. I suppose it was just as well. We would have had to wait until the middle of the night for the football games.

posted by John @ 6:36 AM