Thanksgiving in China

It has been a while, hope you didn't miss me too much!!

I have got a lot of questions about Thanksgiving in China. People are wondering what I did for it, if I had turkey, if it was served from a wok, etc.

I am here to give you the scoop!

First, Liz flew in last Saturday AM. I will give you more details about her trip in blogs to come. On Sunday, we actually attended a expat-Thanksgiving celebration thrown by Damien, the director here in China. There were about 35 people there, all expats from the US. They brought in turkeys and all kinds of good stuff. It was also a pot luck situation, everyone brought a dish to share. So, needless to say, we got our fill of all things American. Plenty of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. I was going to bring some of my world famous sour cream mashed potatoes and green bean castle, but unfortunately, we don't have an oven. Apparently most Chinese homes do not have ovens, who would have known? So, instead I took on drink duty. I was responsible for drinks at the party. I went to the local expat grocery and bought a ton of everything liquid. They delivered for free, which made the whole experience MUCH easier! Needless to say, I bought far too much! Better to have too much than too little I guess!! The meal was great! The only things missing were my green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and most importantly, FOOTBALL!!!! All in all, it was a great celebration (with tons of young children!). Liz got to meet my peers here in China all at once; it worked out quite well).

All that being said, that party was on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

What did we do on Thanksgiving eve you ask?

Well, Liz and I were actually visiting Beijing during the holiday....which was AMAZING! We actually climbed the Great Wall of China on Thanksgiving Day! More of that to come....

Then it came to Thanksgiving eve. We were not sure what to do for dinner. It was very cold in Beijing and Liz had a little cold after the day, so we wanted to stay local. We walked downstairs in the hotel and *wallah* there was a Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel restaurant. So, Liz and I took the easy way out and joined the American celebration in the hotel!

There was a good mix of Americans and Chinese there actually. From what I could tell, it looks like local expats living in Beijing all made reservations to dine at the hotel and celebrate. I didn't expect that.

The dinner was actually a buffet. Most of the buffet had nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but the Turkey and potatoes were good! The rest was quite interesting, sushi, random Chinese food, the standards. The desert was good too, quite good indeed. No pie, but fondue and bread pudding worked.

So, the question of the century is answered, that is what we did for Thanksgiving.

Hope each of you had a great Thanksgiving! Look forward to seeing all of you soon!