Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the time with family and friends, and eating lots of yummy turkey! I will be spending Turkey Day with my PC family at Mac 's Refuge, a hotel in Sevare run by an expat named Mac. He is cooking Thanksgiving dinner for us, which includes a roast pig, mashed potatoes, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and some sort of fruit dish. Should be yummy! :)

So what are you thankful for this year? Having unlimited time by myself to think, I feel like I have never been more grateful for so many people and things in my life. So this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for:
- The kindness and understanding of strangers, who are now becoming friends
- My family and friends back home
- Mail from home, and friends who make the effort to stay in touch
- New PC friends
- Skype
- Being an American citizen
- Shade and trees
- Yoga
- The variety of food available in the US
- Travel and making a new home
- Ridiculously bright colored fabric (and fabric with Barack and Michelle Obama's faces on it!! I have an outfit completely made of it, it's fabulous)
- My bike, and the bike ride into Sevare
- BBC World Service on my shortwave radio
- Electricity, running water/indoor plumbing, and the Internet once very 2 weeks

Most of all, though, I am thankful to all of you for reading this and supporting me. I am so grateful to have this opportunity, and love the challenges that it presents me with daily, but I could not do it without the support of family and friends from home. So thank you!

3 comments:

C. Bryan Rulon said...

Blast. I just left a nice long message but google conveniently dumped it! I'll write more later but the jist was to have a nice T-day.
Bryan

samurai said...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING JENNY!!!

so, technically i'm a few hours late, but whatevs, it totally counts ;)

love and miss you to the moon and back i tell ya! hope you enjoyed your yummy feast!

C. Bryan Rulon said...

Jen. Hope you're doing well. Glad to get the occasional updates. I thought Japan was exotic. Sounds like it's got nuthin on Mali. Is the political scene there pretty stable? Then again, I'm not sure how stable the political situation is here! Politics and Religion are the two topics mom and I don't discuss (or at least never dispassionatley).
Well, around here, life goes on farily normally. Mom had a show of her paintings at the Cicero Library - very nice exhibit - and sold a piece. I've got the garden shut down for the winter, or more exactly, I'm leaving it alone for the winter. Some nice new rocks and a new wall (the Great Wall of Arcadia) with a new shelter. Also practicing piano alot, Brahms, Bach, Copland, Shostikovich, Prokovief, the usual warhorses that I never got around to working on. Perhaps a recital somewhere around here in the not too distant future.
Had my family over for the holidays. Much munch, all very good but far too much. Even when I tried to moderate, I failed. But leftover turkey and oyster dressing is a perennial favorite. I wont ask you particular questions because I know you have limited computer time. Thinking often of you, though and looking forward to a nice long story telling session when you return. Be well.