Thanksgiving in China

  So, if I am friends with you on Facebook I assume you would have seen several photos of me at the Foreign AYC Teachers of Changzhou Thanksgiving Party so this may contain photos you have already seen.
  China does not celebrate Thanksgiving, it is really a United States thing, although other countries, like Canada, have their own Thanksgiving. Because of this I had to work on Thanksgiving, which did not make it feel like Thanksgiving, at all. My fellow AYCers, they are those that are in the same program as myself, decided that we were not going to let work stop us and were celebrating this holiday. Someone offered their apartment to the cause while we decided on what to bring. It was to be a carry-in. We decided on an American food, with an emphasis on Mexican cuisine, carry-in to be precise. I had already decide that I was going to make pumpkin pie, so I ignored the Mexican cuisine thing. I was pretty sure that the English teachers at my school had never tried pumpkin pie and I could not let that continue so I set about finding the ingredients and making a pumpkin pie from scratch, because you cannot find the cheaters canned pumpkin pie filling anywhere! I did find the disposable pie tins so I could actually make the pie shaped like a pie. That was exciting.
  Our meeting time was prepared and people were group chatting (using the app WeChat) what they were bringing. Someone was even making burritos, that was something to look forward to. Since I was making pie I had to find my recipe, google was helpful for the pie filling part and my grandma (mom's mom) was helpful for the crust. Event though I am thousands of miles away I still need my grandma's help : ) she is awesome! (Just noting that all my grandparents are awesome!! I think they are the most awesome two sets of grandparents in the entire world! . . . it is great if you think yours are but I will have to disagree.) So, I made my pie, it was okay, the teachers at the school thought it would taste better warm (since they eat mostly warms foods). I did inform them that it would taste really bad if they ate it warm but they still thought it would improve the pie. I did find cool whip (that is what I call it) to put on the top and that just make the cake . . . or pie (hehe). The teachers did not really know what the cool whip was to begin with but I knew some of them had tried it before and after explaining and showing them the bottle with the Mandarin characters on it they understood. Some of the English teachers' children came to the office after school, I did not have enough pumpkin pie left over for them to have some but I did spray some of the cool whip (it was in one of those spray bottle things) on their fingers. I told one of them to hold their pointer finger out and sprayed some of the cool whip on it, of course they all wanted some, and after they tried it they wanted more. They had to leave really soon after that so I was able to escape with some cool whip remaining.
  I meet up with a Chinese friend, he was wanting to go to the Thanksgiving party as well and learn more about American culture. We headed to the party and arrived before the burritos did, slightly sad timing but they eventually showed up. Here is what the table looked like, the stuff in the front is what the Chinese individual brought, so it is not American food, but the rest is bread, fruit, chips and guacamole, cheese, my pumpkin pie and other stuff. The burritos were not here yet when I took this picture.

  This is me with my pie taken by another AYC teacher, she requested this and I went along with it. I also stole it from Facebook, I was entitled to do that since it was of me : ).

  This last picture is of our Thanksgiving group. They are a fun bunch of people and have keep some of America alive in China.