Last Thursday night I celebrated Thanksgiving with a wonderful group of friends that I have met over the last five years in Shanghai. The twelve of us (some new friends and some old), celebrated with a traditional turkey dinner that had the best turkey most of the table had ever eaten.
I ordered it all – no food preparation in my kitchen at all except for deviled eggs and my friend Marcus who made stuffed tomatoes. This was predicated by two things – 1) Thanksgiving is not a holiday here, so I had to work on Thursday and 2) my oven decided to break the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The stress free way, then was delivery!
City Shop, the local supermarket chain has a delivery service and previous years I had had their turkeys as well. They did not disappoint.
One of the joys was that two of my friends brought their kids and so we had four kids under the age of six who were there as well, full of energy and really cute! It was the first time that three of the four of them had turkey, so I am now part of their cultural history!
Luckily one of my acquaintances had recommended that I print off some Thanksgiving coloring pages to keep them occupied while we ate. They worked like a charm! I need to keep that in mind for future events.
As we were finishing up the main course and before we had a chance to cut the pies that I ordered (my mother’s pie is still hands down better than the pie that was delivered) my parents called! We were able to use my iPad to connect them to the gathering and share some of our enthusiasm with them. Technology at its best.
Here are a few other photos from our evening. What a wonderful night!
I am thankful for many things including the opportunity to celebrate this holiday here in Shanghai in my new apartment. It was the first time I had people over and was a resounding success.
I am also thankful for my readers of the blog and your continued support and interest in my Shanghai adventures. Thank you for your visits and comments. May Thanksgiving morph from a holiday into a state of mind for us all.
This post is also my response to the Weekly Photo Challenge – Thankful. If you’d like to see what others are thankful for, you can click here.