Happy Turkey Day

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone back home. We've had a busy couple of days getting ready for the big day and teaching all the foreigners around here what Thanksgiving is all about (eating). Stephanie went all out as usual, with help from roomie Alison. You can't just go to the store and buy everything out of a can or pre-mixed here, you actually have to get raw ingredients and make stuff from scratch. Novel concept, I know. Much to my surprise, Steph was not at all daunted by the task, and boy did she pull it off. We had a big juicy turkey, cooked upside down but still turned out really good. For sweet potato casserole, Steph used orange kumara (same as sweet potato as far as we can tell), boiled it and mashed it up herself. They don't have mini marshmallows to put on top but it still turned out good as ever. We had green bean casserole, for which we were able to buy canned green beans and mushroom soup, but we had to fry up the little onion crisps ourselves. They don't have Jiffy mix so we had to find corn meal to make cornbread. Steph doesn't like the creamed corn they have here so she went ahead and made that too. Pumpkin pie was made using raw pumpkin, boiled and mashed up. They don't have whipped cream so the girls literally whipped some cream. You get the idea. It was a chore. Alison made stuffing Irish-style, some spiced rice stuff, plus a carrot cake. We did find a little jar of cranberry sauce, though Steph claims she would have made it herself if you could buy fresh cranberries. Steph made me some sweet tea as well as her grandma's apple cider. Simon and I oversaw the whole operation and put in just enough effort to say we did something. 

the feast

Believe or not, but you don't automatically get off work on Thanksgiving Day here (discrimination), so we had scheduling conflicts. This actually turned out great for me because we ended up having two feasts yesterday. The first was just the roomies since Alison had to work at 5.

Later some of the riversurfing crew came over. Stephen and his wife Rachel from the US were happy to get to celebrate Thanksgiving while abroad. Sean and Garth from Zimbabwe and South Africa weren't about to pass down an opportunity to eat until stuffed. Let's just say they are fans of Thanksgiving.

clockwise from left: steph, garth, sean, simon, adam, rachel, stephen

Also here are a couple pics from the new place. I couldn't get the panoramic function to work right on my camera or on the computer, but you get the idea.

Happy Holidays everybody. Hope everyone back home had a good Thankgiving and a good holiday season. We miss everybody. Wish you were here (not us there - this place is awesome!)