OUR FIRST "ASIAN THANKSGIVING"

Now that our internet is connected for the moment, I can update you on our first big American holiday overseas! As you can see by the huge spread, we did not want for food at all, and we didn't want for warm fellowship either. We spent our first Thanksgiving at our friends' house in the big city. There is even a restaurant there that imports turkeys for all of the foreigners! So we ate and ate - turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, pies, iced tea! - and then we moved our stuffed bodies to the sofa and watched football games on DVD while we dozed in and out of consciousness. Then after a while, we went back to the kitchen to repeat the process again for dinner. It felt almost like home! We certainly have a lot to be thankful for this year, even though we're away from the ones we love the most.



Here are some of the guys working off their meal - throwing around an American football for a while. A good time was had by all!














This is a sign that is in the hotel where we stay that makes us laugh every time we see it. Sometimes "chinglish" is so funny to us - an indication that we're finally off our rockers, I guess. Now the kids instinctively know that when we enter the hotel, we are keeping silence.














Meet the WONDER MACHINE!! This is the dehumidifier that we purchased while we were away for Thanksgiving (they are difficult to find even in the bigger cities). Since the humidity in our apartment had been hovering between 70 and 80 percent since we arrived here, and our clothing, furniture and walls were growing mold constantly, we felt like this was indeed a wise, much-needed purchase. After getting the lovely machine home, realizing it didn't work and that there was no one here who had ever seen one before, we finally found an electrician willing to work on it. He fixed it in 30 minutes! In the first 24 hours it was functioning, it filtered out over 2 gallons of water from the air in our 850 square feet of living space. Unreal. Now our humidity level has dropped by 20 percent and it doesn't smell like mold in here anymore! HOORAY!!!!




















And speaking of being thankful, this is what greeted us when we arrived home after our Thanksgiving trip - 13 care packages in 2 days! Our pantry looks like we live in America again! Easy Mac! Froot Loops! Peanut Butter! Jello Pudding! Hamburger Helper! Maurice's Barbeque Sauce! And the list goes on and on! This is a picture of our 4 very happy little American people, eating Froot by the Foot. THANK YOU, FRIENDS!!! We love you and are very thankful for you!