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| This is what Thanksgiving looks like in my neighbourhood. I've been told to expect great things for Christmas. (And sometime when I have moment I will post the photos from Halloween...) |
Curled up with leftover pumpkin pie and a
Spode Christmas Tree mug full of coffee. It's Black Friday out there and I'm safer in here.
Ok, so. I was the very lucky, grateful and stuffed guest of five Thanksgiving gatherings this year—two Canadian ones back in October, and three yesterday. (And there were a couple I am very sad to have missed :( ) Being new to the country this means a lot to me. Difficult to put into words without sounding trite, but, really, it does mean a lot.
Quick iphone flashback:
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| Canadian Thanksgiving 1. This was hosted by a half-Canadian friend, but guests were mostly Americans. Note the sundresses and tshirts. I instinctively wore a sweater because, well, it was Thanksgiving, which is... obviously a fallish thing. The Americans thought it was quite cute and Canadian of me. |
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| This was the full ex-pat dinner. We finished off with Casears as a token of our enduring patriotism. Kudos to N. for sourcing clamato juice. (Ever figure out how they get juice from clams? I haven't... ) |
I really missed home over Canadian Thanksgiving and it was so good to have nice people and delicious food to take the edge off of that. And I am now officially a big fan of American Thanksgiving—such a good day. First of all, the weather was gorgeous. See below (this is directly above the inflatable Turkey):
My landlord/roomate and his fiance and son were around in the morning getting ready to head out to their massive family dinner at some sort of massive family abode in the countryside. Christmas music, general tomfoolery, no conflicts for the shower, all very nice.
I started off with a quick trip to
Stinky. A cheese shop by any other name.... anyway, I hope to give Stinky its own post at some point, but the general idea is cheese, chacouterie, craft beer that they sell in jars, etc. etc. Everyone there is friendly and lovely and they got me sorted out with some nice chunks of cheese for my hosts.
First stop. A classmate invited me to come along with her and her boyfriend to their friend Steve's house in LES. Steve is awesome. He owns a hardware store and, as you can tell by the fact that every inch of wall space is hung salon-style with artwork, he is a true lover/ supporter of the arts. Apparently many young artists in the city have worked in his store over the years. There were easels for drawing at the ready, homemade kombucha and pretty banjo music. (I also had a totally fascinating conversation with a German mathematician from the Max Planck Institut about the ways and degrees to which imagination can be mathematically modeled...)
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| Thanksgiving Kombucha |
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| Thanksgiving tattoo. Swamp Thing. |
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| Steve is really into street art and graffiti. This is a Jim Joe. |
I got to hang out there for a bit and then I headed over to venue 2, which was the very first invitation I got, and was luckily only a 10 min walk away from the fist venue (which was the second invitation I got.) My second host is basically, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful writer/thinker about art EVER. If you're into Renaissance art. Which I am. Which is probably his fault to begin with. The walk looked like this:
On finding my way up to the apartment, I was rewarded with this view:
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| ! |
And this Cat:
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| !! |
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| First Course |
Main course was lamb and all sorts of sides—Jerusalem artichokes, yams, kale etc. Dessert was Pear and Cape Cod Gooseberry clafoutis. No pictures because I was distracted by eating, and the light was disappearing anyway. As below:
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| This very impressive array was employed responsibly. |
I left shortly after 10 and made a quick trip uptown to gathering #3 for an after dinner drink:
I discovered I'd missed a Turducken! Having yet to taste one myself I'm still not convinced they really exist. It's like saying you had stuffed griffin for dinner, or something. It was pretty perfect, though, everyone was in a post-feast sprawl watching
Super 8 on the very cool home theatre/projector set up thing they have. I got a piece of pumpkin pie (yay!) and little tumbler of wine and settled in.
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| I'm just going to post this blurry picture bc I don't think it's fair to snap people in bad lighting and turducken comas. |
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| Sign of a good meal. And this is after the initial clearing. |
And then I randomly ran into friends on the train on the way home! Like a little power up for the warm fuzzy glow the very late, long wait at Broadway&Lafayette station had just started to nibble away at.
So in closing, I am very thankful for warm, lovely people who open their homes expat urchins.
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| Thank you and good night |
