A Chinese Thanksgiving

I'll admit, I was a bit sad about the prospect of my first
Thanksgiving ever without turkey. Even in Hong Kong, we could get
Thanksgiving dinner- and introduce Thanksgiving to our foreign
friends. Which was definitely a great Thanksgiving.

Here, I had the day off except for a Chinese lesson. Yang Haiying
chose to take me to the Antiques Market, which was great. A random big
building with lots of little antique shops- mostly jade, or
calligraphy paintings. This one shop showed me a very long scroll- it
was the four seasons that they could only show me one season at a
time, due to it's huge size. It was a mountain scene, but all
connected together, and flowing from one season to the next. gorgeous!
Painted by an 80 year old man who has been painting since he was 8
years old, and who took 6 months to paint the scene. Another highlight
was finding a shop with violins hanging. I told them I played and
asked if I could try one. The old guy there played me some folk songs
he knew, by ear, and I played a bit (very rusty, haven't played in
months!) and even tried some music. He was really nice and very funny-
said the only English he knew was "please come in" and "very good." We
went around the market, which included a pet area with fish and
hamsters, tea shops, and stores I would classify as "random crap." One
store owner seemed excited to direct me toward batiks with Jesus and
other religious scenes- very weird. Because I am a foreigner I
suppose?

The market was quite cool and not something I can say I might have
found on my own. Maybe I'll head back there when I have some more
money saved up, because there's real jade and some good quality
paintings there.

I celebrated Thanksgiving in my own way by watching the Thanksgiving
episodes of Grey's Anatomy, and "Slapsgiving" of How I Met Your
Mother. I'm also doing some Thanksgiving activities in my classes.
Since my family and friends are quite fond of board games, I am trying
to play a version of "Imaginiff" in my older class. I think it will be
fun since we all know each other somewhat by now.

Then I asked all the teachers at the school to eat dinner with me.
After some discussion, we decided to move Dumpling Friday to Thursday
for a special Thanksgiving. This seemed appropriate to me since
Thanksgiving is all about bonding, and Fridays are our bonding time
over good food. We got our usual favorite dishes as well as a pumpkin
dish. It was this sort of crazy basket filled with pumpkin, corn,
meat, and pancakes. Somehow seemed very "Thanksgiving."

Certainly, I missed my friends and family on Thanksgiving. And having
a real T-day dinner. But, cheesily, I gotta say that I am thankful for
the guys at the school- they are good friends. And my Chinese
teachers. I also am employed in a job I like in a place I like. life
could be worse!