Godspeed.

Chinese Student (to me): Do you people eat leeks?
Me: By "you people" do you mean "white people"?
Chinese Student (slightly embarrassed): Well, Yes! I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner at this white guys house and I don't know what to bring! I was going to make dumplings with leeks, but I don't know if they would actually eat that!
Me: Oh ok. Well yes, we eat leeks. At least I do.

This was by far the most amusing Thanksgiving conversation I had with my students before Thanksgiving. As I have discovered, the majority of my Chinese students do not celebrate Thanksgiving, mostly because either they or their parents moved here from China. Thanksgiving is not high on their priorities of holidays. They do, however, make good use of Black Friday deals as I have discovered from my shopping savvy Chinese students.




This Thanksgiving was my 6th Thanksgiving away from home. I'm getting pretty used to it and at this point it's pretty normal to adopt other families for a weekend. This time I went with my roommate, Vanessa, to a cabin in the middle of no where Cooksburg, Pennsylvania. No cell phone service. No internet. AND you could see the stars. It was marvelous! It took us 2 hours to get out of the city on Wednesday and took us a total of 9 hours to arrive, but we made it!



The most amusing part of the trip for me was the hike to the "big trees."Being from the west coast I was looking forward to seeing some big trees, where I am used to seeing trees big enough you can drive through. You know, I'm used to such places called 'the Valley of the Giants" or the Redwoods. So as we are walking along enjoying the FRESH air and wildlife, I finally asked.. "So.. where are the big trees?" Vanessa turned and pointed to the trees around us and said "here! Ta-da!" We had a good laugh over it; these are big trees for the east coast, which are not to be compared to the west.

Big Trees and Laika leading the way.

View of the forest from the fire tower.