Thanksgiving

In the picture to the left you can see 8 people. Behind the corner there is actually a 9th. About 15 minutes after this picture was taken a 10th person showed up, and about another 15 minutes after that an 11th and 12th and 13th person showed up. So just to make this crystal clear, in my one bedroom apartment I had the joy of very very cozily sharing Thanksgiving with 13 of my friends. Two of the the people, Jon and Rathi are from England, and five of the people, James, Esther, Won-Me, Hee-Jin, and Ashley are Korean, so more than half of our little "family" was celebrating their first Thanksgiving EVER.

Though we would have loved to have all the traditional foods (i.e. turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc.) they are 1) very hard to come by and 2) EXTREMELY expensive. Regarding the turkey, since no one we know owns an oven, had we wanted to buy a turkey, we would have had to fork over about $90 for a fully cooked 8-9 pound turkey. So, we decided to simply fill our feast w/ as many "American" foods as possible. The resulting feast consisted of, pizza, donuts, ice cream and potato chips. I ended up adding some Kimchi to the mix (most for our Korean guests) and my friend who is Korean, James, brought some Sundae (blood sausage) and pig liver. So, all told, we had quite the multicultural Thanksgiving feast.

We even went around the "table," or rather, we went around the circle and talked about the things for which we were thankful. Interestingly enough, I think my friends who are Korean were the most shy about the experience. My theory is that there were a couple of things at play. First, my friends who are Korean don't hang out w/ us expats as much as we all hang out w/ each other, so they shyness could be due to that. Second, though all of them are COMPLETELY fluent in English, maybe when put on the spot it made them a little shy, and third, I've noticed that in Korea many people do not show/express too much emotion in public. Talking about the things in life for which you are thankful is a pretty emotional thing to do. Regardless, everyone shared their thoughts, and it was really wonderful.

We finished the night w/ a game of catch phrase, and then around 11PM everyone headed home.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Friends, food, "family" (real and fictive) and the joy of community are all blessings, and I for one and extremely thankful to have them all in my life!