Thanksgiving Part II

Thanksgiving Extravaganza began on Friday with our Thanksgiving Feast that Clayton, Jeff and I threw for Makoto and one of Clayton's Chinese tutors...It began with our trip to the East market to buy 2 chickens (yeah...no turkey but chicken is a close cousin) with Makoto as our guide. We bought the two beautiful birds you see below:

Then, following the directions of Clayton's sister-in-law we prepared our first roasted chickens. Below you can see Clayton being "zesty" with an orange...

Our orange , butter, and seasoned birds ready for the oven!


Then I carved our chickens...yeah that's right, I'm the man of our China family (big surprise right :) Our feast also featured: mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, buscuits, and cranberry sauce (even if it was the jellied kind that apparently no one else has EVER seen before! they were all hating on the poor Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce until they tasted it and decided that even without chunks of cranberries it was delicious)

Our lovely Thanksgiving table (decorations thanks to Ben and my mom who both sent me WONDERFUL care packages!)

Day 2 of Thanksgiving Extravaganza featured a lunch hosted by the ELIC teachers. There were also other ELIC teachers from all over Shandong Province who came (a total of 30 of us ate together). Clayton, Jeff and I prepared the wonderful mashed potatoes...they were a huge hit! And a good thing too...because we made our first serious Qufu dialect mistake and accidentally paid 40rmb for the potatoes instead of 14rmb! ooopsies...good thing that's not a big difference in USD or CND :)

mmmmm thanksgiving food...soo good when you've been eating Chinese food for about 3 months! (p.s. decorations are thanks to Traci's Sophomore Culture Class)

So....Clayton and I made sure to represent the "Kiddie Table" even all the way over here in China. We're super mature, and should always be allowed to sit together!