A Russian Thanksgiving
Posted on 1:52 PM
Happy Thanksgiving from Russia!
I know it's a couple of days late, but it has sort of been a 3 day celebration here (which I could get used to...)
The school gives the American teachers Thanksgiving off (which I just think is so nice) but they only give us the one day off (which isn't so nice) and we can choose to take it on Thursday or take it on Friday. So all of us took off on Friday and went to school on Thanksgiving day. A lot of the Russians knew that it was a special holiday for us and told us to have a nice holiday and one even gave me candy! Ha ha so on Thursdays I do a craft
with my second graders and we made these pop-up cards that said Happy Thanksgiving and had a turkey on the inside and the beak popped out when you opened it. But the kids kept saying "chicken! chicken!" and I was like "no! Turkey!" and I even wrote it on the chalkboard but I don't think it was something that ever really sank in...
On Friday we decided to do something really fun so of course I suggested the ice sculpture museum. We wereso thankful (ha) that there were actually blue skies (ok, not much, but you could see patches here and there and maybe even some rays of sunlight now and then) on our one day off!! Julie, Becca, Rick, Jeff, and I found the museum and it was in this dinky, sketchy looking shed in the middle of this nice, but deserted park. You had to wear these alien-looking robe things that were really heavy so that your body heat didn't melt the sculptures and they only
let in 10 people at a time. They keep it at -10 degrees Celsius (which is 14 Fahrenheit) and by the end my fingers were numb even though I was wearing my mittens. But it was so worth it. The sculptures made it feel like Narnia when the white witch freezes everything and they even had an ice throne that you could sit on and places for other people to stick their heads to look like they were your servants! We took lots of pictures because we were the only ones in there.After the ice sculptures, we were really cold so we went to Coffee House and had some warm drinks and snacks because we didn't want to ruin our appetite because we went to the American compound again for dinner! Amy Wood (the American that had us over for a Halloween dinner) had us over again for dinner. The food was SO good and we all got really full and had pumpkin pie and everything.
And that brings us to today...all of the American teachers are making Thanksgiving dinner and having over our Russian friends to celebrate with! I was thinking about how the first Thanksgiving was how the pilgrims made dinner for Squanto and the other Native Americans that helped them make it in their new country and through the winter and it's kind of like we are doing that for the Russians. We're saying thank you to the natives for helping us in our new country (ok I know that's really cheesy, but seriously. It is like that.).
So from Russia...happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for all of my family and friends back home (and in other parts of the world) and I love you and miss you on this wonderful American holiday!
1 comments:
I really like your thoughts about dinner with your Russian friends - yes, it's very reminiscent of the first Thanksgiving! What a cool way to think of it.
The ice sculptures are amazing - you may never see anything like that again! Thanksgiving was wonderful having you "here" with us!!!! That made it the best. Miss you tons and can't wait to celebrate the "greatest birthday party" ever with you (aka Christmas :-)).
Oh, and I ate a piece of Chocolate Cream pie for you!
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