thanksgiving this year

Last year, in China, celebrating Thanksgiving consisted of walking from our apartment to the Vineyard, the bar/restaurant that also served as a regular waterhole/gathering place for all Hangzhou expats, widening our eyes at its incredibly expensive (by the standard of the local salary Daniel was earning) Thanksgiving menu, and being able to decline with relief the head chef's invite that we come back another day because it was a RSVP-required event anyway.

This year, Daniel, Declan, and I were invited to four different Thanksgiving dinner gatherings, and we accepted the first two invites, which happened on Thursday night and Friday night.

The Thursday night crowd consisted of a bunch of random mostly late-20s/some 30s/a few early 40s English speakers from the Eastern seaboard of the US, England, Australia, other parts of Europe. A lot were math postdocs at Technion or from other Israeli institutions who had rode the train up from the south. It was loud, crowded, short on quality food, but well-stocked in liquor. The turkey was brined and deliciously moist, and the green bean casserole that I liked so much was gone in about 30 seconds. I also accidentally grabbed a cup that I had thought was clean/new, but upon the first few sips, realized that it was most likely someone's discard, which they had not thrown away but simply put down next to the stack of new, unused tower of cups. It was like making out with a drunk frat boy during a college party. Yuck. Declan ate a lot of turkey because he likes salty things, then he threw it all up on the bus ride home. (Thank goodness I kept the plastic bag that we brought our dinner contributions in!) Haifa has very curvy and hilly roads, and Declan's motion sickness on busses is yet another reason-- aside from last week's likelihood of bus bombings--that limits my mobility around the city.

Friday afternoon consisted of Daniel and I making fried garlic mashed potatoes, a sweet potato dish, and white/dark chocolate chip cookies to take over to Kirsten's and Or's place. A lot of their (and our, now) friends from Tel Aviv rented cars and drove up to eat together. It was wonderful. Especially with the home-made gravy that I drizzled over e-ve-ry-thing. We gave thanks before dinner for the Iron Dome, the ceasefire, everyone being safe during Operation Pillar of Defense, Rachel's seven-week-old baby, and a new pregnancy amongst us. I ate more than I needed, and did not regret my gluttony at all.

So. My Thanksgiving 2012 chronicles. Who knows what next year will bring.