Friday, November 23, 2007

A Chinese Thanksgiving Tale

Only a few days after my quiet birthday celebration, we all gathered around the table in J.'s apartment for this year's Thanksgiving meal. Last year I ate alone since all the other foreigners worked late. The year before I ate at a restaurant with the other Americans (I think I had fried eel and fries that year). So, this year easily topped those past Thanksgivings in quality of food.

I sent my oven over to J.'s in the afternoon so we could finish cooking for the meal. He got the new bakery to make some pumpkin pies for dessert (by some, I mean more than four). I also brought over a variation of buffalo wings (not fried, but still pretty good). And the two of us headed for RenRenLe for more food to prepare before everyone arrived.

Of course, everyone showed up late (two had to work late and one got stuck in traffic). There was supposed to be one more guest, but apparently he forgot to come (and we expected that to happen). We all made some new friends--only J. knew everyone--and stuffed ourselves stupid. We also went through a bit too much booze. While waiting for everyone to arrive, J. and I went through two beers each, then we went through three bottles of wine at dinner, and four more beers after. We finished up sometime around 1 am--I'm sure glad we didn't do this ON Thanksgiving because I would never be able to wake up for work after a night like that.

The feast certainly let me forget the Jets score--guess it's back to hoping for the top pick in the draft.

In other news: Paris Hilton visited Shanghai this week for some reason, [insert inappropriate joke here]. In a seemingly unrelated story, the government is trying to force Beijing hotels to stock condoms in all rooms to prevent the surging HIV cases, which have increased 54 percent this year.

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