Thanksgiving Week

No, they do not officially celebrate Thanksgiving in the country the Pilgrims fled from. But we still had a great week+. It started exactly a week early on the night our American friend Sean had his Thanksgiving celebration. See Sean lives in a big house with 6 or 7 roommates, all from other countries. They wanted to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner so Sean said yeah, let's have it on Thanksgiving, the 3rd Thursday of November. By the time they realized no, Thanksgiving is actually on the 4th Thursday of November, they had already planned the meal, invited friends over, etc. so they went ahead and had it a week early, which was fine with us. All the food was great, and I'm pretty sure some New Zealanders are now sold on the idea of pumpkin in pie.

Last Saturday we got together with some friends and went ice skating in Hyde Park. London actually has loads of ice skating rinks all over the city, but Hyde Park also had a little "German Christmas market" set up by the rink (fake life-size Santas, penguins, polar bears, etc.). The demand for ice skating in London must be very high because despite the large number of rinks around the city, we still had to buy tickets in advance that allowed us to skate for one hour around a very crowded rink. Regardless, it was pretty fun.

On Wednesday night (Thanksgiving Eve), we had our first pseudo visitors in the UK! Our friends Sam and Kara were in Europe because Sam had been working in Paris for a couple of weeks. They came to London for a few days so we met up Wednesday night in Kensington. It was great to catch up with them and see some real life Kansas Citians from back home. Went to a small Italian restaurant called Timo and then a pub called The Old Goat Tavern.

Then, on actual Thanksgiving Thursday, I had to work, which was not cool. No, I didn't watch any football and did not take a nap. But Anne did manage to go get a turkey sandwich for lunch at the Borough Market, and she found some turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes at a local grocery store so we had a small Thanksgiving dinner, which was scrumptious. Then I had to get up and go to work on Thanksgiving Friday too. Again, not cool. It was pretty interesting though how many people at work were familiar with the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

Finally, on Saturday, the real celebration took place. We got together with some friends and had an intense Thanksgiving feast. Some people made mashed potatoes, some made sweet potatoes, Anne made my Grandma's famous stuffing--we all toted our respective dishes on the train to the house where the turkey was. There was also homemade gravy, cranberry sauce, corn, pumpkin pie, whipped cream, pumpkin bread, apple pie, etc. There were only eight of us (the most that could fit in our friend's flat), and it was delicious. I think we each probably ate as much as we could, which seemed like less than we could a few months ago due the smaller portion sizes we're getting used to over here. And on Saturday, we actually did get to watch some American football (KU over Mizzou) because one of the couples has this crazy device called a Slingbox. Needless to say, it was fantastic. Oh, and thanks Moms for the identical Thanksgiving cards!

Sunday was recovery day. Again, see links to new photo albums on the right.