Thanksgiving!

I took a lot of photos of our Thanksgiving shenanigans today, so I'll just post them!

Stylish! We bought masks to keep our faces warm when we run. We couldn't really breathe with them on, it turns out, so we took them off on lap three. So much for that; but, at least we look like ninjas!

The preschool we walk by on the way to the park was making quite a bit of noise this morning:

Ian was amused to find out that this church stone simply says "Immanuel."  The church is near the park.

The whole giant church.



Our Thanksgiving dinner was pretty great, Ian did a great job.  I wish I could have helped more, but with no oven and a one person sized kitchen, I'm pretty useless.  We brought the table in and ate like proper grown ups.

The set table.

Making a feast is difficult with only two burners.  There are to things cooking in each; tofurky and stuffing in one and sweet potatoes steaming over the boiling mashing potatoes in the other.

The tofurky and stuffing.

The finished products.  The tofurky tasted just like the brand name stuff, though the texture could have used some time in an oven to pull some of the moisture out of it.

Mashed potatoes and sugared sweet potatoes.  Isn't our serveware gorgeous?

Looks like a Thanksgiving plate to me!  Except... where's my fruit salad?!

Too full!  We're not used to eating hearty meals.  It was tough to finish my plate, but, I managed.

(faux) Ice cream and "leaf pie" for dessert, anyone?  We can't find the word for milk in the ice cream ingredients and it says it's a "mix" on the carton.  The leaf pies are from Paris Baguette, they're baked pie crust in a leaf shape and they're pretty yummy.


I hope you all have a wonderful and gluttonous holiday tomorrow.  I'm going to enjoy the parade that I am streaming now.  Good night!

Holiday Blues

The holidays are upon us and I'm pretty bummed out about it.  At home, my favorite part of the holidays is the feeling of warmth and good cheer that is pervasive throughout our culture.  Well, obviously, there is a definite lack of it here.

Ian is doing his best to keep up the cheer.  He even has a Thanksgiving-ish dinner planned for tomorrow:  mashed potatoes, tofurky, veggie stuffing, veggie gravy and ice cream and a make shift sugared sweet potato dish for dessert.  We're going to start some of the prep tonight, which (to be honest) I am not looking forward to.  But, I can see how it might make me feel better.

I'll be watching the parade tomorrow at around 11pm my time.  The EarthCam website that is streaming it won't have any of the commentary that NBC does.  While that makes most people thrilled, I am one of the few people who actually enjoys it.  I have a few other websites that I will be checking, so maybe one of them will feature the NBC broadcast.

Here's one of my favorite moments from last year's parade:

Well, that's about all I've got for today; it was all pretty average.  Good night!

Oh, Monday

I never used to have a problem with Mondays.  But, here, I find them difficult to endure.  Every week I feel as though I am starting over.  It's a crummy feeling, but I'm sure it will eventually go away.  I'm especially tired today and I'm worried that my body my be fighting off a virus again.  Kids + Korean social behavior are hard on my immune system, I think.  I'll just keep downing the little vitamin drinks.

On a humorous note, Ian used "I drink your milkshake!" as a tongue twister today.  He had them do it with the proper Daniel Day Lewis inflection and all.  I wish it was on tape.

Chun wha hasn't emailed me back about 072air.com (the Korean-only website we want to use for cheap tickets to Japan).  She wasn't at work for very long today and she didn't talk to me about anything.  I think she might be blowing us off, so, we may not have her help.  We'll see what happens next.  Our Korean coworkers don't respond to emails in anything close to a timely manner and any time they don't want to deal with us they just tell us they don't understand.  It's a bit isolating.

We got notification of a package today.  We were going to run errands tomorrow anyway since we have a meeting with Julia at 11.  We'll be sending a test note home to see how long it takes to get there.

We won't be online for too long tomorrow morning, but our goal is to get up at 7 to deal with student loan business.  Good times.  I hope we can get at least some of it squared away.

Can anyone tell me where I can watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade online?  I'd like to stream it live from the EST time zone if possible.  I read somewhere that it is available, but I haven't had a lot of luck finding info.  Any help is appreciated.

 Wish us luck with our meeting tomorrow, she wants us there at 11, which usually means she feels she has a lot to say.  Good night!