Thanksgiving 2012

I'm a bit slow at getting these pictures up, but we had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  It is more "trouble" to make those special dishes from home here, but it also makes them seem more delicious and appreciated.  

I really wanted green bean casserole.  We have an imports store that had cream of mushroom soup, but I had to make the french fried onions.  It wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be, and we had batter left to have more deep-fried goodness a few days later.  

 Pumpkins (although a different variety than we have in the US) are more commonly eaten here and easy to find.  Where there is pumpkin, there can be pumpkin pie :)

 Ovens are NOT standard in homes here.  What we have is more like a toaster oven, but it gets the job done.

Our Thursday feast:   pumpkin pie, pound cake, Russian bread (authentically Russian.  one of James' classmates from Russia has begun baking loaves and selling them to her classmates for about $1.50/loaf), green bean casserole, salad, chicken (the turkey cost $74 at the import store.  no thanks), and sweet potatoes.

Our friends.  James' best friend here who teaches at a college and one of James' American classmates.  She's here doing research for her dissertation.

Our family

We went to another feast on Saturday but didn't think to get out the camera.  There were somewhere between 20-30 of us there.  It was nice to meet some of the foreigners in the city we hasn't met and to again fill up on such delicious treats.  When we got back that evening, we decorated our Christmas tree.

Someone really liked the lights.

 Our little helper