Our first Thanksgiving in Viet Nam has been a good reminder of all that we are thankful for! Life, health, friends, being loved first, so that we can love others…..It is a good time to say, even in the midst of a broken scapula, we are doing well and loving the city and new friends we have been placed with. We are very thankful this year that we are finding ourselves in the middle of exactly what we have been challenged to do for this time in our lives. Thankful to a Father who calls us by name and gives purpose in life.
The preparation started off with Jill and me (Joelle) working together to create our first Thanksgiving meal ever! And not just for our families, but for 10 of us in total. Our old teammate, Susan, joined us from Hanoi. And also, we were blessed by the presence of 4 of our long distance teammates for the weekend. These 4 girls are teaching in a city about 7 hours away by bus. They are with our same organization and it was a fun time of reuniting, laughing, sharing and encouraging. I myself was greatly encouraged by getting to see the hearts that our teammates have for their students. One more girl, our neighbor and coworker here at Quy Nhon University, joined us also, making the 10. She is from Belgium and experienced a first also – her first Thanksgiving meal!Our visitors came a few days before our Thanksgiving celebration, so we had a chance to show them around the city, go bowling with them, take them to class and generally have a lot of fun.
The day of our celebration (which was on Friday due to teaching schedules) was a mixture of the traditional and not-so-traditional. In true Vietnamese style, Steven lashed half of our furniture to his bicycle and pedaled over to Jill and Jason's with it. Since it makes him more visible to (and thus less likely to get pegged by) speeding motorbikes, he's considering carrying around a stack of plastic chairs everywhere he goes now.
Even though the “turkey” (roasted chicken) was served with chopsticks, we managed to put together a very American food experience. You know all those recipes that call for canned this, or pre-prepared that…. we stared from raw veggies sold in an open market and ended up having quite the feast! Many hands make light work. Many hands also take up a lot of the counter space, so some of the prep was done on the kitchen floor. That errs on more of the Vietnamese style than the American, but worked just the same in getting everyone involved in the great afternoon.
And yes, everyone took part. Steven made everyone pumpkin coffee and also made whipping cream from scratch (using a whisk). Vigorous whipping may have reinjured his scapula, but we had really good whipping cream to go on top of our pumpkin pie! Meanwhile, Jason washed all the dishes and we women sat and relaxed after the meal. It was a great time. Like eating Thanksgiving meals at home, there was far too much food and we all did our part in eating it up.
