F'hain Thanksgiving Extravaganza

I'm going on a posting binge to make it up to those who care, but I had to separate these two posts. Thanksgiving in the F'hain grew out of a resolve from last year. Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday to spend outside of the states. My sister was so funny...I told her that on the phone and she was like "Why?! It's not like you miss anything here. Really." I'm sure it has a lot to do with expat-romanticism...the things we don't have, we tend to redschön. Thanksgiving has definitely become more important to me since I've taught it in a thousand lessons and explained it's history to tons of curious Germans. Last year was hard because we didn't celebrate, so I resolved to do it up this year in style, and Stephan had not choice but to go along for the ride. 

It was pretty cool if I do say so myself.

The battle plan was as follows...we had a team of  approximately 16 "guests" (if you can call them that while still expecting them to work for their dinner) who were then divided into three smaller groups who were then assigned to one of the three kitchens. The grou

ps were deliberately mixed so that people were with people they didn't know, and everyone had authentic recipes and ingredients distributed amongst them. They were then sent to said kitchens and told to produce said items. 

There were some stressful moments where I had something close to boiling over/burning on on the stove and was taking a phone call from Stephan complaining that they had too many sweet potatoes and what should they do about it, while desperately waiting for a refill on my wine glass...but it worked. My team was fantastic, we were done with our stuff in a jiff and could get to work on the decorations/beverage consumption/serious relaxation. 

I think all told, everything was ready and we sat down to eat shortly before seven pm. The cooking had started effectively at one. The last guest left at two am. It was a scene of mass carnage and destruction but everyone went home extremely full and at least a little tipsy if not roaring drunk. 

What amazes me is that almost a week later, people still haven't come to claim their chairs or KITCHEN TABLES?!?! How does one live without a kitchen table? Or chairs? I mean, yes one can eat on the couch, but really? I'm glad we live on the top floor...we've just put everything out on the landing in the stairwell. Noone comes up here who's not invited anyway, and there are only four apartments. 

However, if a photo is really worth a thousand words, I'll close with this picture of Vika and Stefan:

Guys, come get your effing table. 

Thanks.

Love,

Mia