Happy Thanksgiving!

Since coming to China, I've had plenty of opportunities to experience and learn about Chinese holidays. I celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival with my host family, traveled to Jiangxi Province for Chinese National Day, and learned about singles' day (11/11) which, not unlike Black Friday, is a time for people to shop online at extremely discounted prices. Celebrating American holidays, though, is a little more difficult.

Last Thursday for Thanksgiving, the other foreign students at Changzhou Senior High School and I celebrated by leaving school at 6:00 instead of 8:00 and going to KFC for dinner; we figured it was the closest thing we could find to a Thanksgiving dinner without going to an extremely expensive Western restaurant. For Kaori and Andrea, it was their first Thanksgiving, but Andrea also pointed out that it was therefore the best Thanksgiving they had ever celebrated.

We ordered the things we could find that best approximated a Thanksgiving dinner, but that was kind of difficult, so we ended up eating fried chicken, mashed potatoes, french fries, corn on the cob, and something that vaguely resembled coleslaw with a lot of corn in it. We joked about how long it had taken us to make the food and how much work we had put into setting the table, but we also talked about the things we were most thankful for, like our opportunity to be in China together. For a Thanksgiving that was nothing like any I've celebrated before, this one was pretty good.

In October we also celebrated Halloween, by attending a party put on by the school's international teachers for the students in their classes. We all at pizza for the first time in months, watched the international classes act out Cinderella and Snow White, and played games. It was a fun opportunity to talk to some of the international teachers and meet more of the Chinese students.

Christmas is still almost a month away, but even in Changzhou Christmas trees and decorations have started to go up around the city. At this point I have no idea what Christmas in China will be like; I've hared we have school that day, and I've also heard that the international classes will hold another party. Maybe we'll come up with a creative way to celebrate like we did for Thanksgiving. I'll have to wait and see!