Thanksgiving Dinner!

Helping Mama Victoria get ready for Thanksgiving.

Katie and Victoria wrestle with the bird trying to get it ready for the oven.

25+ lb. turkey = 8 1/2 hours in oven. Smelled so good all day! Good thing the Rices have that great oven which is very, very rare in China.

Don't drop the turkey!That's not how you fix a turkey!
Brian carves the bird.
So much good food. Appetizers, bread, and drinks.
Everything you could wish for and more for Thanksgiving dinner.
Dessert! Apple pie, Cranberry Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pies, Brownies, Cheesecake, and Carrot Cake. All in China!

Just the food alone gave me so much to be thankful for! Mostly, I was thankful to be with Family. The Rices are my China family and all the people they invited to come share Thanksgiving dinner were Family too. Such a great time. Reminds me of dinners at my Grandma Gaugler's house. Noisy, hectic, people everywhere, tons of good food, family, friends. More post and pictures to come . . . so much to blog about!

Back Home at the Rices for Thanksgiving!

Although Katie and I technically only got Thanksgiving Day off, we did some work to rearrange and make up our classes so that we could go back to Meng Zi to see Brian and Victoria Rice and their family for Thanksgiving. Katie and I have spent every China Thanksgiving with the Rices and after a year it was just time to see them again. It was a short trip--we left Wednesday morning and were back Sunday afternoon--but so so good to see them! Here's a few fun photos of us all together first, then I'll post pictures from Thanksgiving dinner.

Getting to see Esther again and meet Grace for the first time! So sweet an so cute!

Helping Mama Victoria in her kitchen

Rachel and her friend Liu Xing

Esther and their Kitty, Xiao Feng (Little Wind)

When we got to their house, Brian and Caleb were out in some surrounding villages. They got home Thursday late morning. I love it that Brian rents those Chinese vans and drives them all over! It's not every waiguoren that's willing or able to drive in China!

Xanga Deserter

So after four years of blogging on Xanga, I'm fed up. After China blocked Xanga, I thought I'd be ok because I was able to use a proxy server. The proxy server works and lets me access my blog, but uploading pictures and especially videos is pain-stakingly slow. And now, the proxy server is moody and I have to restart my computer every time I want to have it on. So, the frustration has now outweighed the fondness I have for my Xanga blog which I've used for four years. I'm moving on and (hopefully) moving up and using Blogger. Blogger is still blocked in China, but I can log in and post to it without a problem and I can post to Blogger via email which is a nice feature, especially when I'm traveling and can't use a proxy server.

Another better feature about Blogger is that anyone can comment on my blog! I love to know who's reading my posts and to get feedback on what I write. Feel free to leave me a comment. Plus, it'll help me know that I haven't lost all of my blog follows by switching.

Thanksgiving Post coming soon . . .