Is it really Thanksgiving? I guess the time has come for me to buckle down and make it through the holidays in a foreign country. This means having a foreign experience for Thanksgiving, and yes it was. No Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on television, no cold weather....only blistering hot, and the worst part of all, no family around. But I knew this time was coming and feel very grateful that we have made friends to surround ourselves with this holiday season.
My friend Betsye Park is a lover of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have been hearing stories about how the American branch members get together to celebrate Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays of the year. Betsye is a party planner and by default of friendship I became her partner in crime this year. Our dinner included 30 guests and was held in the cafeteria at our building. Since Thanksgiving is obviously not acknowledged in Vietnam we decided to hold the dinner on Friday night so our guests wouldn't feel rushed to get home on a work / school night. And after all the work, I would say it was a successful Thanksgiving holiday (even if 2 kids threw up after eating).
 |
| grocery shopping at Veggies, which is an American import store. I rarely shop here since it is extremely overpriced! |
 |
| Betsye and I doing our Thursday night prepping of toasting the bread for stuffing. |
 |
| Thanksgiving morning was spent making rolls...8 dozen.....without an electric mixer of any kind! I had to move the chairs away from the table so the boys wouldn't climb up and snitch the rolls. Drey was going nuts wanting to eat one! |
 |
| Our finished product! Betsye makes a killer turkey. She brought over her oven and the turkey the night before so she could cook it at my house. It's nice to have portable ovens. And I will say that I did enjoy one perk about hosting the dinner, I still had all the wonderful smells of a Thanksgiving turkey in my home. |
 |
| Cooking the last minute dishes before dinner |
 |
| Betsye's husband Johnny carving the bird. |
 |
| Thanh and Lindsay Nguyen. She made all the delicious pies, pumpkin and apple. |
Happy Thanksgiving!
No comments:
Post a Comment