An Olgii Thanksgiving (Scott)

Thanksgiving '09 has come and gone...twice. The five of us Americans living in Olgii, four PCVs and our eagle-hunting friend Lauren, got together this past Thursday and did the holiday justice. We started at our house in the morning where Ashlee prepared a wonderful brunch: scrambled eggs, fruit salad, and country potatoes. I think that Lauren in particular really appreciated the meal as she spends most of her time out in the countryside with the other eagle hunters. She lives a pretty Kazakh lifestyle complete with plates of boiled meat, dried yogurt, and cup after cup of milk tea. After brunch, we all gathered around and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving...or at least we tried to watch it. Poor Laura was just too excited about the holiday and she had an especially hard time sitting still and being quiet.


We ate dinner at Laura's house and, once again, we had quite the spread: chicken pot pie, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams (courtesy of the Riggins' care package), greenbean casserole, biscuits, cornbread, and cranberry sauce. Laura also baked three pies: pumpkin, pecan, and cherry. Ha, I know that I have been talking about food a lot lately, but every day we are so grateful that we are able to maintain a semblance of an American diet. Getting into this, I was worried that we'd been eating buuz (Mongolian meat dumplings) every day. So yes, we definitely have a lot to be thankful for!

These are Ashlee's magnificent yams. She cooked them at our house and then took them to Laura's where she warmed 'em up before we ate. Apparently Laura saw 'em warming and decided to "stick a chopstick in them." Ashlee was a bit flustered because this ruined the presentation. Laura then called Ashlee the "Thanksgiving Nazi."