HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
I am, first and foremost, thankful for all of you, my friends, my family, my support system back home. You all deserve a pat on the back for the wonderfulness that is you!
Spending my first Thanksgiving away from the family/the country was quite a unique experience. Actually, the day started off rough; I got locked out of my apartment at about 9:00 am, no one had a spare key, none of my friends were home (thankfully I don't have to work on Thursdays, but that's not common and everyone else was teaching), and so I spent the day alone in Guiyang. I decided that, since Friday will be quite busy with other things, I would treat Thanksgiving as "black Friday" and try and do some Christmas shopping. After discovering that to ship anything from China costs double what it costs to mail from America (which is already exceedingly expensive), I gave up on shopping and decided to spend my Thanksgiving lunch having a "feast" of Pizza at an overpriced buffet. I sat alone, had pseudo-pizza and pseudo-coffee, and it was actually quite nice. Thankfully, I had my book (Pride and Prejudice since I'm a terrible English major who's never actually read it), so Pizza Fun allowed me to sit and relax for an hour.
As it turned out, I waited until 6:00 pm (outside) before a locksmith finally came. And, adding insult to injury, my school refused to pay for it so it was my out-of-pocket expense. Needless to say, today wasn't a great day, holiday or not. However, and here I need to give a shout of thanks to friendship, my friend called at about 6:10 after he finished teaching and, the good friend he is, he was able to help completely turn my mood back around, forget today's events, and then he treated me to a feast of fish hotpot.
Thanksgiving evening was wonderful! After the delicious, filling hotpot, my friend and I came back to my house and opened up a box of Christmas decorations that former volunteers had left for me. There were so many things! A Christmas tree, Christmas lights, a nativity, snowflakes, stockings, the works! Back home, my family always puts the Christmas tree up Thanksgiving night, so my friend and I carried on the tradition and put my tree up together. Today he was able to celebrate his first Thanksgiving and be introduced to the crazy one-month-too-early American Christmas. And the boys in the boys' dormitory across from me all gathered to watch me put up Christmas lights and snowflakes in my windows. I'm sure they were confused about what the crazy foreigner was up to. :)
Tonight was topped off in greatness by receiving a phone call from a Chinese boy I met one weekend who lives on the other side of China. He called just to say that he knew today was an American holiday, he wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving, and to tell me that he is thankful that I am here teaching English for free. His phone call was a wonderful gift! He had no reason to extend himself like that, but he did anyways, and that to me was the best Thanksgiving moment I could have asked for.
Last night, Zhu Kui, my Peace Corps boss (and friend) came to visit me, see my school, and to observe me teach a class. Afterwards, she told me my class was "perfect", and my students told her (we had talked about Thanksgiving in class) that they were thankful for her because she sent me to their school. That was also quite special. :) I'm thankful for last night, too.
In Thanksgiving fashion, I leave you with a list of things I'm thankful for:
- Mom and Dad
- My Luke
- My grandparents
- My Mary and all other friends who are there through thick-and-thin
- My Peace Corps family, and for all friends in China*** (I'm soooo thankful to have friends in China!!)
- God
- My wonderful, brilliant students
- Skype
- Health
- Great coworkers/neighbors
- Language (verbal, facial, body) and the ability to communicate
- Peace Corps Org. and their outstanding support
Xiexie nimen! Thank you all!
God bless and happy holiday!!
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