Before I begin my Thanksgiving stories, I wanted to tell about something that I didn’t get to write about last week. On Wednesday I was at the elementary school, and we went outside to play during recess. One of the girls had a leaf collection for whatever reason and was pulling me over to the gingko trees that were shedding their leaves. The golden yellow leaves were absolutely gorgeous! I forget who threw the first fistful of leaves at whom, but before too long there were leaves flying in every direction. It was as if we were playing in the snow and tossing snowballs at one another. It was a lot of fun! However, more and more kids saw what was happening, and eventually there were about twenty-five kids who ganged up against me. It was the kids versus the foreigner, and I was losing! I called a cease-fire and tried to reorganize the kids into two teams so that the leaf throwing could be a little more fair, but they didn’t really go for that idea. Instead they preferred to just throw leaves at me. (I had so many leaves thrown at me that whenever I went back inside, I had two leafs clinging to the back of my hair, and that night when I undressed for my shower I found a leaf caught between my undershirt and sweater!) We were having a good time until a few of the boys decided that it would also be fun to throw sand from a nearby sand pile. Nope! I got sand to the head once and promptly decided that THAT was the end of that game! 
I actually didn’t have any classes last Thursday at school, and it was rather nice. I spent the whole day catching up on things, planning Christmas lessons, and blogging. As soon as I got home that night, I immediately started baking. Ian wasn’t home since he had to go to his class in Kagoshima, so it was just me and my kitchen. I had a long list of things to bake and immediately started them. I mixed together my chocolate cake and threw that in the rice cooker. Then I moved onto steaming the pumpkin for pies, made myself a quick dinner (picture below), (yep, noodles was my Thanksgiving dinner!) and went to eikaiwa. Once I got home, I finished the pies. Ian didn’t get home from Kagoshima until nearly 11PM, and we went to bed shortly after that since he had to wake up at 5AM to start the turkey.
Ian knows how serious I get about my sleep in time on the weekends, and he joked about setting alarms to go off at 5, then 5:15, and every quarter hour until I was up with him, but I told him that if he dared to do that, I would END him. 
I’m a light sleeper, so I heard him wake up and put the turkey on. Once he crawled back into bed with me, it was like curling up with warm smoked meat because that was exactly what he smelled like!! Ugh!
Friday morning we skyped all of our family at home. It was good to see and hear from everyone, and missing this Thanksgiving was a LOT less emotional than last year. I didn’t even cry this year! 
Yay! (This also proves my point that the longer you stay away from home, the easier it is.) We took all of our skypers on a field trip outside to show them our smoker and turkey (above, left). After we had skyped everyone, I finished up my cooking—homemade whipped cream and cranberries—before heading to a concert thing at the elementary school. I was invited to it a while back by my vice principal at the ES. The elementary kids did a few song and dance numbers, then the JHS brass band played, and finally some lady from a news station talked. (I only stayed for the student performances since I had more prep work for Thanksgiving dinner.) When I first arrived, I sat in the chairs with the rest of the audience. However, my supervisor (all of the BOE members were there) got me and told me to sit at the tables on the side with the rest of the special guests, including the mayor and town officials. They were dressed in nice business suits, and there I was looking like a fool with my jeans and sweater. Ugh!
Whenever it was time to go to dinner at Margo’s house, one crucial part of the meal wasn’t ready….the turkey! Despite Ian having it on the smoker for ten hours, it still wasn’t done! We weren’t exactly sure what to do until Ian had the idea to just take our oven and finish it at Margo’s house. This idea would definitely not be plausible in the States, but here in Japan ovens are the size of American microwaves. All we had to do was unplug it and load it in the car. 
With all of our dinner items, oven, and two friends who we gave a ride to, our car was quite loaded down! In fact, the turkey had to ride on David’s lap!
As we were on our way to dinner, I couldn’t help but to think how grown up and mature I felt. Here we were going to our own Thanksgiving dinner. All of us were spending the day away from our own families, yet we had made our own little family. Not only that but we were bringing the meal. None of us were there to just snag a free meal. Each of us had cooked or baked something to bring and share. I felt so grown up!!
Twelve of us Kuma-gun ALTs gathered at Margo’s house for a delicious meal. While Ian and Melissa carved the bird, a few of the others and myself unwrapped and uncovered plates of food. It was a feast indeed (below, right)! We had things that we never get to eat over here like turkey, dressing, cranberries, mac and cheese, tamales, some Portuguese dish that Melissa’s family makes every year, baked beans, and then there were the staples like sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, salad, fruit, cream cheese fruit salad, and everything was DELICIOUS! When I was getting my plate, I got halfway around the table before dishing out smaller portions of everything so that it would all fit on my plate! The above mentioned things that we never get to eat were the first to go. The two boxes of dressing that Ian made were destroyed in a matter of seconds. The best thing about the food was that it was traditional American food. There was no white rice or noodles—just plain traditional deliciousness.
After we had stuffed ourselves silly, we celebrated David and Devin’s birthdays. David, Mollee, and Lucas went to a singing festival practice in Hitoyoshi, and we made Devin leave the room for a minute so that we could bring out the surprise decorations. Once David, Mollee, and Lucas got back, we sang happy birthday to David and Devin and ate cake. We also decided to play a few games and occasionally made our way back to the food table for one more roll or one more scoop of potatoes. It was a great night, and if anyone left that house hungry, it was his or her own fault!!
Ian saved the turkey bones, so we made turkey soup with them on Saturday and invited people over. The only people to accept our invitation were Margo and Melissa. Ian had to go to work on Saturday, so I stayed at home and watched the boiling bones, cleaned the house, and used the leftover pumpkin to make pumpkin bread.
Ian and I both have become obsessed with the show Supernatural. Devin got us hooked on it, and ever since we started watching it, we haven’t been able to stop. Devin has the first six seasons, and one by one, Ian and I have been borrowing them and watching episode after episode. For those of you who don’t know the plot, it’s about two brothers who investigate the evil supernatural things—ghosts, demons, vampires, reapers, etc and destroy them. The episodes aren’t scary, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it now freaks me out a bit to be alone in the house and hear a bump. Ian and I were watching an episode on Saturday night while waiting for Melissa and Margo to arrive. All of the sudden we heard our hallway door rattle open, and both Ian and I jumped and shot our heads in the direction of the sound. I always make fun of the characters on the show for saying “…..Hello?” to the things that go bump in the night. This apparently is the only acceptable thing to say to strange noises…. However, what did I say when I heard the strange noise? “…..Hello?” Gah!!! Luckily for us it wasn’t a ghost or demon…..just Melissa. She said that she knocked and no one answered, but we scolded her for sneaking up on us while we watched Supernatural. You just can’t do that!!
As we were eating dinner that night the PA box that everyone in Yunomae has in their house went off. We turned off for everyday announcements, so the only time it goes off is when there is something serious going on. When this happens, it is a high pitch tornado-like siren followed by an announcement from some town official. It has gone off a few times when typhoons roll through to announce heavy rainfall or once to state that there were monkeys spotted in town and to not engage them because they were wild animals, but on Saturday night, it was very unusual for it to go off. Melissa said that the announcement said something about searching for something. Fast forward to early, early, early Sunday morning. At 3AM we heard the PA go off again. I woke up Ian to see if he could translate the message. Neither of us could understand what was going on, and Ian went to the window to see if there was any mass panic outside. There wasn’t, so we rolled over and went back to sleep. Around 10 AM there was a knock on the door. One of the town firefighters was on our doorstep telling me…..something… and then asking for money. I told him sorry, but I didn’t understand. Once he realized that I had no idea what he was saying, he thanked me and moved on to the next house. Ian, who is much better at piecing things together than me, figured out why the firefighter was there just from a few keywords that he overheard. His theory was that someone’s house burned down (hence the 3 AM siren and announcement) and the firefighter was going door-to-door collecting donations for the family. I don’t have any proof of this theory, but it sounded right to me. I wished that I would have been able to piece that together because I most certainly would have donated money!
Anyway……that’s the story of our Thanksgiving weekend. It most certainly was nice to be able to spend it with other Americans! Also, I’m definitely looking forward to celebrating it at home next year!
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