Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Nov 28 2013: Duck Day

Thanksgiving!

It started out really boring. Sitting around on the couch, me on the computer emailing and Katie on her phone playing plants vs zombies. Not very exciting at all. We finally headed out to the corner to get drinks and look for jackets. We wanted leather [faux] jackets, found some non leather jackets, but didn’t end up getting any. Kind of depressing actually… So we headed home, and we had received a text to bring the wine and forks to the school so Abby could pick them up and use them for the night’s cooking.

We stopped home, grabbed them and headed to school. It was after lunch by then and we needed to work on our classes. There was a note on Katie’s desk to take the wine to the couple’s apartment but talk about bad timing, so we just put the bag on their desk, since Greg would be getting to school soon himself.

He also handed over the lessons for Friday, since they were leaving for a three day weekend and they’d taught for us the week before!

Anyways, we focused on lessons and stuff before finally heading off to teach.

I brought candy for Grade 4, put up two lines on the board and said if they were gone, then no candy! 

Except I’m super lenient. We also got very busy with the trivia game, learning some new words and such! I forgot when class ended. They had a little squiggle left, so I still gave them candy. The bell rang and I felt bad so that’s when I handed out a tootsie roll to everyone and let them have two minutes of a Thanksgiving cartoon. They were so bummed when I had to pull the plug, but I had to get to my other class! I had one kid say ‘bad teacher’ and I gave him a look and reminded him I gave him candy, so he grinned and said I was a good teacher after all.

Grade 3 Class 3 got a bit crazy, but I still ended up doing the same and giving them some candy as well. It wasn’t the worst they’ve been, you know?

However in one of Katie’s classes, her usually good class was chaotic, so they didn’t get candy. Which was okay with me since that means more for us! Which is shameful, I know. But it helps ignore any homesickness, you know? They’re like a familiar comfort food.

We went to dinner and ate a buttload of fried rice. And remembered we were doing a Thanksgiving dinner in a few hours, haha.

So we headed home and sat around for a few hours until a bit after seven, before remembering the time and heading over to Abby and Gregs. We also brought them some tootsie rolls.

Though we were late, it was okay because it wasn’t quite finished. Abby and Greg were still moving about in the tiny kitchen, and Nicole was there on her phone on the couch. So Katie went to go wash dishes and since four people can’t fit in that tiny space, I wandered about and wiped the table and helped set a few things up, calling it good.

Finally we were ready and dug in!

Cranberries, a sticky rice thing Nicole brought over, deviled eggs,  duck with sweet onions, mashed potatoes with delicious duck gravy, yams with some marshmallows, rolls with butter. It was all so delicious! We dug in and I know I ended up having like three plates. Well, one of them might have been filled with corn.

It was Nicole’s first time with real American food, too! We couldn’t believe it. She loved all of it, especially the mashed potatoes! Super tasty. Though she did think they were a bit salty, which made us all laugh- there is very little salty food in China, though she thinks contrary. And the rest of us during dinner were putting extra salt on… well, everything, basically. So that was pretty funny to all of us. We talked a while about all sorts of differences between the countries’ differences, and that was a bit of fun overall.

Finally we were all stuffed and content with a little extra apple cider in our cups. So nice, I loved having a touch of real Thanksgiving for us here in China! It was my first one without family, but I guess these people count, haha… :D

Finally we headed home. Abby and Greg were leaving on a train shortly after so they told us to take all the left overs… so we did. Yum! But it was a little nuts trying to carry it all home. Nicole took a few things as well, yay.


We ended up staying up a little later before finally heading to bed, content with another finished Thanksgiving Day.

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