International Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is definitely in my top three favorite holidays, and as far as the actual day goes, Thanksgiving probably beats out even Christmas, although the entire Christmas season is still the big winner...but we're getting to that.  Anyway...I love Thanksgiving...and I'm pretty sure I started talking about it with my friends in Vienna sometime before the summer...and made sure it was in their heads as something we should definitely celebrate together.  When I found out Ryan and Teresa were going to be in town for it I sort of went into overdrive...and it was in big print in my planner starting in August I think...and I made sure my friends here had it on theirs too.  I'm pretty sure those friends were sufficiently annoyed and tired of me talking about it...but I think we all had a great time in the end!  

We began our preparations the day before with a trip to the biggest grocery store I know, and made our way around approximating ingredients as best we could.  I cheated a bit because I have a good friend here with access to the international commissary, and she picked up a few non-replaceable (or difficult to replace) things for me (brown sugar, vanilla extract, canned pumpkin, etc.)  We had a good time translating spices actually...I was asking a friend what spices she had...and we had to get out a translation app on the phone to figure out what things like cloves and nutmeg are called in German, but we figured it out!

We also prepped some of the food the night before...chopping ingredients and making the pumpkin pie.

canned pumpkin and no can opener? a butcher knife will also get this can open...

Thanksgiving day we began our cooking with a little Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on the ipad...and thanks to a friend in the US, we were able to use Slingbox and live stream the Macy's Parade!  I'm pretty sure I've started every Thanksgiving Day I can remember with that parade, so I'm really glad that being in another country didn't have to alter that tradition!

The girls! Done cooking and ready for dinner!

Our crammed table, but we made it work!  A big thanks to my friend Jelena and her brother for letting us use their apartment that they've only been in about a month!  We totally came in and took over the kitchen and dining space, but it was wonderful!

Our group minus two...this was definitely more than just an Austrian Thanksgiving...we were 9 people from 6 different countries...and only 3 of us sure as to why on earth we were eating this food and making such a fuss

yum yum.

The Americans...definitely a Thanksgiving success!

Our best attempt at an entire group picture...the other ones I have we're all laughing so hard that everyone is blurry...but you get the general idea.

It was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember and I was doubly spoiled to have not only my wonderful Vienna friends there, but also best friends from home, and all my friends played along wonderfully...we even went around at dinner and each said what we were thankful for, it felt like we were back at home :)  Hopefully they all enjoyed it enough that next year they will be up for round two!