Notes from my Thai Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

My day was not your ordinary Thanksgiving day it was still pretty great.

-I spent the day at school teaching my students what it is all about. I chose to keep it simple and talk about food and football.  Though, trying to describe mashed potatoes is harder than I would have thought. A few comments from the class I was trying to charade to them what mashing is…

• “French fry!!”  ….no
• “oh! chip! Lays.” …at least we’ve got the potato part right but still no.
• “Like hamburger?” …no no go back to the potatoes.
• “Like put hamburger in potato?” …I think I’ll just look up a picture for you.

We pulled up a picture of a masher and the finished product and we figured  it out.

-Also, I would argue that Thanksgiving it one of the hardest words for a Thai person to say.  We spent a good portion of the class trying to get that one out.

-I said “gobble gobble gobble” at one point and they went into a five minutes laugh fit.

-Of course we talked about what it means to be thankful. And of course we drew turkeys using our hands. It got interesting….

Someone has their priorities straight.

Things my students are thankful for, a few honorable mentions:

• milk
• Teacher Erin..that’s right
• facebook, instagram, twitter
• the world

That night my friend Lauren came into town and we ate the most Thanksgiving like food we could find. Chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes. Close enough. There was no pie to be found though. We settled for cookies and brownies.

Pretty decent day if you ask me.