Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a really interesting cultural experience that I was fortunate enough to share with a really nice couple (who I know through Rotary) and their family. As I was on fish feeding duty at the center for the 5 day weekend I met Christie (my hostess) at 3pm at the center adn we headed to her home. Over the next 3 hours another 12 people arrived for our 6pm dinner even though they were meant to be there at 3 like me (a lot of very late people!). During that time we ate an interesting array of hor d'ourves and played a couple of rounds of Taboo (until that fell apart at the seams as family games can do). Taboo is a game where you have to get your team to guess a word on a card but you cant use the 5 associated words that are also on the card. It's not easy especially when you dont speak American. OK so the main event - dinner. Let's see....we had turkey (obviously), sweet potato biscuits, mashed potatoes, stuffing, roasted beets, roast sweet corn, cranberry relish and almond squash (really loved this). It was very tasty but I am not a fan of cranberries - too tart. The turkey was very tender but to be honest Id definitely prefer chicken any day. Dessert was several types of gelato, cherry pie, pecan pie and some kind of cake but I didnt end up eating any dessert because I had way too much to eat for my main meal. After that I headed back to college. On Saturday I went back into Newark to the Prudential Center but this time it was to see the New Jersey Devils get beaten (Boo!) by the New York Islanders (ice hockey). Still not a fan of Newark - today at the bus stop a man was going around asking people if they wanted/had dropped a cell phone that he was carrying around and he had a handle of what looked like a knife sticking out of his back pocket. Starting to see why I only go to the train station in Newark and nowhere else normally. I also spent the Thanksgiving weekend (Friday in particular) shopping online for Black Friday deals buying mum's Christmas presents...I love shopping...especially when its not my money!