Well we didn't have a river or woods to traverse, but we held our own little Thanksgiving on Saturday. It was probably one of the most multinational Thanksgivings in the history of the holiday with proud representatives of Nigeria, Uganda, Mexico, Norway, India, Iran, and the US present. It turned out really well and we had a ton of food. The night before I made pumpkin, apple, and cherry pie, but as it was our first time using the oven we had some issues with it and the pumpkin was in there for almost 4 hours and even by that point had just barely set. At least I had nice company for the experience - Ada had invited a friend from church over to hang out for a bit (Claire, an actual Brit!) and she was just a total sweetheart. She'd invited her up also because Claire has traveled to Uganda and since Irene is Ugandan she said she'd like to meet her. When Irene came back she cooked the four of us a very traditional Ugandan meal while we waited for the stupid pie to bake - she made matoke, which is really green plantains sliced and boiled, then mashed into a rough paste. It reminded me of a light yellow potato, slightly sweet, but much starchier than a potato. Apparently it's one of the biggest staple foods. It was quite pleasant. She also made this sauce out of ground nuts. When you add water and some other things and boil it, it becomes like a sauce/paste and you eat it with the matoke (or other things). That was surprisingly good, especially as normally I won't touch a nut with a ten-foot pole. My palate has really expanded since I arrived here. Ada had made some Nigerian hot sauce earlier so we tried a little bit of that with the matoke. My oh my - it was the kind of stuff that'll clear your nasal passages right out. Definitely an interesting experience though, and now I can say that I've eaten a traditional Ugandan meal made by a native Ugandan - very cool. Many thanks Irene :D
After Claire left, Irene, Ada, and I stayed and chatted while the pies continued to very, very slowly bake. Eventually Irene went to bed and Ada (who decided to stay through the whole ordeal and provide some company) and I got work and studied for another 2 hours until they finished. Longest baking experience I've ever had . . . I'm not sure what was going on, since we had the temperature up as high as it would go (I originally paid attention to the recommended temperatures - indeed, I took some laughter 'cause I brought my calculator out to convert from C to F) but they finished eventually.
I think Avi and Nithya started chopping things up at around 2 pm Saturday even though dinner wasn't supposed to start until 8 . . . I started doing stuffing at about 4ish, and then Avi started making Indian chicken. I'm not sure what all he put in it, but I can say this much - I have never seen so much garlic in one place at one time in my entire life. There was, no joke, practically a bowl's worth in that frying pan. He cut the chicken into little chunks, microwaved it to get it cooked a little, and then threw it in the pan with a ton of masala and stuff. We taste-tested along the way and it was really, really good - spicy but not quite so spicy that I couldn't handle it (my threshold of spicy has been completely redefined in the past three months). Nithya had made some mushrooms in a sauce that we also tried with that flat semi-fried bread stuff that was so good, and the mushrooms were in a very nice sauce making the whole thing really good (yes, I voluntarily ate not one but two mushrooms - crazy!). Avi also made these miniature omlettes with some masala and little hot pepper slices in them, and those were really good too (they served as our snack while we were cooking). Ada came and she made rice with vegetables, and she also decided to make a dish she learned from a Chinese friend of hers. She sliced potatoes into tiny thin little sticks (almost like a Julienne cut) and did the same with peppers, and then she put them in a frying pan with some seasoning. She used some of the Bell's Poultry Seasoning to add some more flavor and it was a very nice touch - our American masala goes well with Chinese food it seems. We also made mashed potatoes, although I ended up cutting up many more than we needed - by the time we got to making them we only had small pots left, so they took forever to cook. Eventually we just said enough is enough and went with what we had ready at that point, figuring that if there was a desperate cry for more we could always just cook more up. Carlos was good enough to donate manual labor to the cause and mash them up by hand, since we don't have a mixture.
Everything turned out great, and Ada's guest (Lavinya, from India) also brought along a curry that she'd made so we had that as well. Nithya and Avi's friends Arun and Dikshitha (from India) and Nahal (from Iran) came, and Irene brought a Nigerian friend of hers from class, Mercy. I invited Kola and Carlos had asked Ronny (from Norway). We ended up with quite a gathering, although it was unfortunate that Fauzan couldn't be there, as he had to visit cousins in London that day. Apart from that it was a great time though - there was plenty of food and it was all great, and we discovered that the Nigerian hot sauce Ada made goes really well with stuffing - who knew? Perhaps something to keep in mind for future Thanksgivings. Anyway, after we were all stuffed we ended up dancing - it turns out that Dikshitha is actually a professional dancer and she treated us to an exhibition - she's really something. Nahal did one as well, and she was great too. After that we played around with it some, and Avi brought his laptop so we actually had something to listen to. But we were there for a good long time before it started to break up, and after it did even cleanup was fun, since we still had the music. Once all the dishes were washed and everything was sparkly clean again, Carlos, Ada, Irene, and I sat around and just chatted for probably an hour or better . . . Avi, Nithya, and their friends left but came back after a bit, and so we hung out with them, and then they left again to call it a night . . . Irene turned in, and Carlos and Ada and I eventually called it quits around 3am or so . . . it was definitely a good Thanksgiving though, albeit a little nontraditional. But excellent all the same.
It seems hard to believe that it's almost been three months since I arrived here, and that next week is the last week of the term. Methods class is already finished, and Holocaust next week is just a wrap up. In Hebrew we have the exam, and the professor did not make any friends in class this evening - she assigned us a whole new unit of verbs to learn, with all their infinitive patterns and rules of usage, before the test and since we only have class once a week we don't have an opportunity to go over our work with her before then to see if we've got it down. I guess we'll just have to do a little praying or something. Overall the class ended up not being so bad . . . once the reading clicked it really helped. Still, I'll take the Cyrillic alphabet over this any day; the vowels are still so tricky. But it's much better than it started out being.
There have been more protests and demonstrations about the education cuts. In the first one I wrote about, 17 people ended up being arrested, and the blockage on Oxford Road was indeed caused by the masses of protesters marching down the middle of the street. About a week ago in London there were huge demonstrations too, and today another smaller one; I heard shouting outside my window and when I looked out there were about 100 students running down below, chanting slogans and waving anti-legislation banners. It's all very interesting, and I've definitely seen an increase in police presence lately; I ran into several mounted officers coming down Oxford Road the other day. I don't know that the protests are going to do much, but it's really something to see.
I've realized that when I leave next year, I won't be able to take my cactus garden with me, and that's kind of a sad feeling . . . I've grown quite attached to those three little guys. They brighten the place up just enough and give a touch of green that so far I've been unable to kill. I wish I had some red fabric so I could make some little tree skirts for them, in the spirit of the holiday season. They do cheer things up though.
Some pictures of Thanksgiving are in the Manchester 2010/2011 album on Facebook, at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038978&id=71701775&l=415aa6fc5d
