Oh, Thanksgiving. As much as I love it, it is, regrettably, an American holiday only (unless you count Canadian Thanksgiving). At the very least, Hong Kong doesn't recognize it. While this sad little fact leaves many of us American exchange students crying foul, I have to give Hong Kong a fair shake. We don't get time off for Mid-Autumn Festival or other Chinese holidays in the USA, so I guess it's just give and take.
To be honest, it hardly felt like the beginning of the holiday season this past week. It's been sunny and about 80 degrees Fahrenheit consistently for the last 2-3 weeks so part of my brain is still convinced it's late September.
However, it was Thanksgiving last week, so I got to thinking, and I really have a lot to be thankful for. Friends and family, for example. I couldn't possibly extricate one group from the other. I always feel like my friends in America are just around the corner since everyone's just an email or a skype chat away. Likewise, the friends I've made in Hong Kong, both foreigners and locals, have made this 30-mile rock feel just like home. In many ways, my friends are my family--even more so here--because it's a little more troublesome getting home now than just a 2-hour drive from Columbia to Cheraw. Even so, I'm thankful for my family. So many parents would have forbidden their kids from flying halfway across the world to live in a foreign country they've never been to before, and then not see them face-to-face for over 6 months. Without their trust and support (despite the constant question "Are you really sure? It's OK if you change your mind!"), I don't know if I would have had the confidence to live abroad in a place like Hong Kong, where I don't even speak the main language!
I'm thankful, too, for finding an open and loving church family at Chung Chi Chapel. Regrettably, I haven't been a regular-churchgoer in many years, but I guess I just needed to be scared out of my mind living in a new and unfamiliar place to make me run back to church. And, yes, I admit it...I'm thankful for dim sum. That stuff is so addictive that I'm already trying to squeeze in as much of it as I can before going cold turkey for a month (no pun intended, really!). Maybe I won't have to, though, since I've got my hands on some recipes for char siu baau, shao mai, etc.
Speaking of Cantonese food, this last Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving) marked the date for my trip with Su to Tai Po Market for snake soup. From now on, I will think of this day as Snakesgiving. Here's the sign for the restaurant...and by restaurant, I mean it had a table or two.
We had 2 choices: snake soup or tortoise soup. We both went for snake, but I've heard the tortoise is good so I'll probably come back:
Snake Soup! It was strange at first, but tasty. Before, I heard that snake tastes like chicken, but I have to disagree. The taste is very unique, something like chicken and crab mixed together. The snake meat was a little dry, but the soup made it more moist and juicy. Overall, I would certainly recommend it. It really does warm you up, by the way. My stomach felt really warm for an hour or two afterward.
Both Su and I were quite impressed with how good dinner turned out. She says she's coming back before she leaves Hong Kong.
Of course, the bowls were rather small. We both still had the munchies while walking around the market. There was only one solution to be had: Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts (a.k.a. an evil invention by Cantonese bakeries to make the gwailo fat). Yum!
Thankfully, Wednesday night did not mark the end of the good food. As difficult as it may be to believe, there is Thanksgiving dinner to be found in Hong Kong. They serve it at some upscale American restaurants. Naturally, this called for an American IBCE dinner gathering. JJ arranged the whole thing, making an 8:30pm reservation at Jimmy's Kitchen, an American restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. We had a big turnout, as you can see from this picture of us waiting for the MTR:
En route with Jiayi and Fenny:
Finally, 45 minutes later, we got to our evening destination:
David even snagged a local to take a group picture for us, looking classy of course!
Our table wasn't ready yet since we arrived a little early, so we got seated in the waiting area:
The service at this place actually wasn't very good. Therefore, as a recommendation to next year's IBCE students, if you're planning a group Thanksgiving dinner, think about going to a different restaurant. Despite the super-slow service, we all had a good time, I think. The food was pretty good--some of it delicious, some of it just OK--but it was way too much. I guess that's just part of Thanksgiving, though. Having an 8:30pm reservation was brutal because we were all famished. It didn't help that we had large enticing bread baskets tempting us to spoil our dinners. After almost an hour, our first course, New England Clam Chowder, was served. That was followed by your choice of Cobb Salad or Crab Cake, then came the main course, as you can see below. Turkey, gravy, chestnut stuffing, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and candied sweet potatoes.
While I like, to some extent or another, everything that was on my heaping plate, my 2 favorites came in the skimpiest servings. I would have been happy to replace half the turkey and all the mashed potatoes for more sweet potatoes and stuffing. Alas, my overwhelming love for sweet potatoes went unsatisfied. I suppose that's one good thing about going home December 11th. If I play my cards right, I can have a giant baked sweet potato on my plate by December 12th. Too bad Mom hates them, or I would cook them more often.
Anyway, enough about that! We finished off our multi-course gluttonous feast with pumpkin chiffon pie and vanilla ice cream. Must I even say how stuffed we all were? Here's everyone looking full and happy:
We left the restaurant around 11:00pm and, miraculously, no one had trouble walking. When we arrived back on campus, though, the shuttle buses had stopped running. We all had to walk back to our respective dormitories which, for me, took half an hour. At least I had JJ and Jordan to walk with me, and we got to work off a little of that unavoidable holiday poundage. I got to bed around 2:00am, and woke up at 11:00am...still full!
Now, many of you (but certainly not all) know that I'm in the middle of a long-overdue weight loss process. I started last January and, although the pounds have been hard to come off, they've also been hard to put back on. Apparently, I am extremely resistant to change. However, if anything was going to put me offtrack, it was that late-night Thanksgiving feast. The last thing I wanted to do was step on my bathroom scale (it's extremely popular with the girls on my hall because, strangely, I'm the only one who owns a scale), but I grudgingly decided to do it anyway for damage control purposes. Inexplicably, I have another reason to be thankful. Not only did I not gain weight, I actually lost some since the day before. This bizarre occurrence leads me to only one conclusion: our Thanksgiving dinner wasn't legit enough. Well, legit or not, I'm happy because this puts me at what was originally my goal weight for Christmas.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of sweet potatoes, stuffing, and blessings! Even more than that, I hope that I can see many of you over Christmas Break. In the meantime, upcoming events include going to a Cantonese Opera performance with Alice next Saturday evening. Other than that, it's study, study, study. At least I finish up on the 10th. As far as I know, I fly home the earliest out of everyone in IBCE.
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