thanksgiving adventures

I think Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday....it is filled with all things fall and is just downright American.

On top of that, the story of the Pilgrims, their journey to America, and their friendship with the Massanoit Native Americans is remarkable.

All that to say, here's some snapshots of our Thanksgiving celebrations this year.... as well as a funny thanksgiving memory. :)

and let the preparations begin!

thanksgiving story wheel - later they made little pilgrim, Squanto, and "mean king" clips to help them tell the story. :)

thankful turkeys

my kiddos were NOT being thankful at all....to the point that it almost brought me to tears. So one morning before school as I was bringing this to the Lord, I thought of "Turkey Tom" - the kiddos wrote things they were thankful for on a paper feather and put it inside Turkey Tom. Later, I pulled out the feathers, read them to the class, and stuck them onto Tom's body. The kiddos LOVED it - so much that we ran out of paper feathers in the first day. Of course, true thankfulness is the result of a heart transformed by Him, but thankful for this idea to get the kiddos to count their blessings.

thanksgiving cards for Mom and Dad

the day of our EK thanksgiving feast finally arrived - the parents came and brought food to share. The kiddos shared what they were thankful for - such a fun, but crazy day!

singing an impromptu Thanksgiving song :)

giving the parents an opportunity to share what they're thankful for. :)

oh yes....and here is this year's Mayflower - it kinda morphed into a much bigger project than I imagined, lol.

Thanksgiving Round 2....
This year, my roommates and I debated what to do the actual evening of Thanksgiving..... And as we were bouncing ideas around, we laughed about how we kind of identified ourselves with the Pilgrims - semi-helpless people in a new and strange land....and how we have so many "Squantos" (local friends) to help us! .....This silly discussion morphed into an idea and before we knew it, we were inviting our Chinese friends over to our apartment for a chinese-style Thanksgiving "feast"....as a way of thanking them for their generous help since our arrival. We had a blast celebrating together - and for many of them, it was their first Thanksgiving celebration. :)

Sally even dressed up like a Pilgrim, haha. :)

so we didn't have turkey....so we attempted to make our meat at least look like a turkey, haha. Any guess on what kind of meat we choose to eat??? :) 

it may or may not have been donkey meat.... :S

our meal complete with chinese take out and apple pie, haha!

game time

roomie Pilgrim pic :)

 Thanksgiving Round 3....
Every year, our school organizes a traditional thanksgiving feast for all the foreign teachers, their friends, and family. It is pretty impressive.

So much MEAT! :S

After the feast, we went back to our apartment to discover that we had accidentally locked ourselves out of our apartment from the inside (we left the spare key in the keyhole)....oops. We called our landlord who directed us to call a locksmith....who would arrive in who knows how long.

Since we didn't know how long it was going to take, we took it upon ourselves to be our own locksmith. We destroyed a few credit cards in attempt to pry our door open, but to no avail. We needed to unlock the door from the inside.

Grace waiting outside our apartment in the dark...

So we resigned ourselves to sitting outside our apartment...in the dark (our light is broken for some reason). We actually joked about we could probably could survive for a while since we had leftovers from the thanksgiving dinner with us. Our neighbors next door are currently in the process of remodeling their home, so most of their furniture is outside in the hallway. One of my roommates, Sally, found some of their foldable chairs and "borrowed" them for us to sit on while we waited.

Joanna, who is not one to give up easily, decided to knock on our neighbor's door just to check and see if anyone was home (even though we knew they most likely were not). To our suprise, our sweet elderly neighbor answered the door. A 60+ year old grandpa, our neighbor was working on putting a shelf together for his apartment. I'm sure we were quite a sight to see - four girls sitting on his chairs in the dark....haha. We explained the situation the best we could in Chinese. Being the industrious man that he is, our neighbor tried to help us with the door, but soon gave up as well. However, he thought of the idea of having us climb out on his balcony, onto the roof that connects our apartments and then drop down onto our own balcony to try to break through a window....

It sounded like fun to us! Joanna and I climbed out onto the balcony of our neighbor's, then onto the roof (it was really beautiful!)...then, our neighbor handed us a ladder (well, two actually - the first one was too short) - which we used to drop onto the other side of our own balcony. I broke/pryed open the bathroom window of our own apartment, climbed through, and unlocked our door from the inside.

very poor quality rooftop selfie

our sweet neighbor (aka rescuer!)

It was an adventurous way to conclude our Thanksgiving indeed. Through the whole experience, we learned that our apartment is pretty difficult to break into (so don't worry, Mom! :). And we learned that He has placed some pretty amazing neighbors right next door to us. We did our best to thank our neighbor by offering him money, food, and a dinner invite - all of which he politely, but strongly refused. We were just overwhelmed by his grace and help. Couldn't help but make the connection with God and how He gives His grace so freely and generously - there's no way we could ever repay Him. :)

All that to say, this year's Thanksgiving was very fun and full. Definitely missed being home and celebrating with friends and family, but I'm thankful to be here and the opportunities to share His love and light with others.

Hope you all had a very blessed thanksgiving! Thankful for you!