This was my first Thanksgiving away from home… I mean, I spent Thanksgiving at my aunt's place in Indy the two years I was living on the East Coast, but I've never been out of the States before for turkey day. It may not seem that big of a deal, but the Liu Fam puts on a ridiculous production every year, and this year was no different; I actually think we try to one up each subsequent year--dad decided to splurge and bought duck fat from Williams-Sonoma so he could make turkey confit this year. WTF! The one year that I'm not home, and he gets all crazy creative on me. Tsok, I'll just make him redo everything when I come back from Christmas… :D
Anyhow, enough about the holiday that I didn't get to experience. I actually participated in my first Thanksgiving hop this year: two Thanksgiving feasts, one right after another! First to Lora's house for a traditional Thanksgiving feast with all the usual fixings (Lora is our veterinary epidemiologist at the CDC), then to Subroto's house (my mentor) for a more hodgepodge, meat-centralized dinner. Thursday morning started with a preliminary baking attempt in our apartment's kitchen… I decided to bake a jam crumb cake for Subroto's party… but I first had to figure out how to use the gas oven, ie light it without blowing the apartment up. Jess was able to help out and lighting the stove went quite smoothly. I did have to improvise though--our oven didn't have a temperature gauge and I didn't have measuring cups or spoons with me, so I had to eyeball everything. It was definitely a test of my baking abilities, heh. It took me almost double the time to make the cake (I've baked this one many times over, usually only takes me 15 minutes to prep, even in the crappy kitchen that I had in Baltimore). Some observations about the ingredients: the butter is strangely yellow and the salted version is a LOT saltier than the US salted butter version… the sugar is a lot grainier, and… well, I guess everything else is the same. :T The cake turned out quite well surprisingly, so I packed that up and readied the ingredients for Lora's cranberry streusel cake that I was going to bake at her place (using a standard American oven with digitized temperatures, thank goodness). Jess and I taxied over to Lora's housing compound early in the afternoon so that I had enough time to bake my cake and also make mashed potatoes for the dinner. In the Liu household, we don't follow the American tradition of beginning the feast at 4 in the afternoon, so it was really weird to have to get all the food ready at such an early hour. Cake and mashed potatoes made it in time for a start at 430pm… although the mashed potatoes were an odd yellow color, courtesy of the weird butter that they have here. Lora invited a lot of US Embassy people over of Thanksgiving, so it was nice to interact with Americans outside of the CDC. My favorite dish that night was the apple cranberry stuffing that Lora made, but I must say, my mashed potatoes were pretty damn good too… huge hit if I do say so myself (there weren't any leftovers of the mashed potatoes, haha). My cake was just ok… I think I underestimated the sugar, so it wasn't as sweet as I had wanted it to be… also might have put too much buttermilk in the mixture.. but other people still liked it :D
We made our way over to Subroto's place around 7pm, and having eaten so much from Lora's party, I could only manage half of a samosa (Indian food at Thanksgiving?) and a half glass of wine. However, I really enjoyed the wine… will have to search for Pinotage South African red wine when I get back to the States… it's a really smooth red, should go well with the rack of lamb that dad is going to make… YUM. Anyhow, the company was more interesting than the food at this party… our country director, Dr. Okey, came along with his brother, a few more Embassy people, and Prof Nassidi, the director of the Nigerian CDC (separate from our CDC Nigeria Office)… who has taken it upon himself to call me and Jessica his daughters. Somewhere in between all the raucous laughter and drunken banter, I mentioned to Dr. Okey's brother that I like opera… I can't remember how we got on the subject, but from that conversation starter, we began talking about all the cool operas and different genres… and then promptly got my third marriage proposal in Nigeria from Dr. Okey's brother. I half-jokingly said that I would think about it, if he got us front row tickets to the NY Metropolitan Opera (he lives in NY)… I'll have to take him up on the offer the next time I'm in NY, hehe. All in all, it was a successful Thanksgiving hop, aside from the four mosquito bites that I received that night (which I subsequently discovered the next morning… having scratched myself raw the night before. O_o
Unfortunately we didn't get Friday after Thanksgiving off… but since I didn't have much to do that day, I spent the majority of the morning surfing the net for Black Friday deals. My disclaimer on work is that I do have my share of projects that I was assigned to.. but no one has shown me where the data is so… I can't get started on it, hehehe. I was pretty wiped from the day before, and pretty groggy, so it wasn't until halfway through the morning that I realized I only had one contact lens on; somehow I had managed to drop my left eye contact lens somewhere, so I had to suffer the entire day with just my right contact lens. Unfortunate, because my left eye vision is actually a lot worse than my right eye's… I still managed to get through the day and spend an hour at the gym (first time after I got super sick a month ago, what with Europe and work and everything in between) before going home to find my sad, shriveled left contact lens on the sink in our bathroom. There was a Marine House party that night, but after a whole day of squinting I wasn't really feeling up for boozy times. I stayed in and watched the rest of Downton Abbey (YAY BBC!) before passing out early.
Saturday was the kick-off for holiday shopping-- Lora picked us up so we could go to the American International School in Abuja's annual Holiday Crafts Fair, where we spent about 2 hours walking around in the hot sun, shopping and haggling for Africa-themed goods. I came back with some good loot (can't report on what I bought specifically, because then it wouldn't be a surprise anymore!), and got them at pretty decent prices… you'd be surprised at how a smile and dogged persistence can drive the prices down. :D Thank you mommy… for your… bargaining genes? haha. After the AISA Fair, we hopped on over to the Marine Consolation BBQ, held in lieu of the Marine Corps Ball. We caught it at the tail end, but it was nice to sit and eat outside. Harmattan allows for a slight breeze during the day, so that being outside is tolerable, if you're in the shade. The food wasn't what I expected though; I was really gunning for American BBQ of sorts, but it ended up being catered food from Spice Foods, Subroto's favorite Indian restaurant here… meh. Chatted with Lora and Jean (a newbie who works at USAID), and then Lora took us home late afternoon. We had one more event Saturday night, the German Christmas Bazaar at the Berger Life Camp, where are the Berger employees and families live (Berger is the main German construction firm responsible for basically creating Abuja from scratch)… I had won tickets through a raffle drawing at the Embassy, so Jess and I met up with one of the US Embassy employees for a ride to the Berger compound. It wasn't quite what I expected, based on how they advertised the event; I guess they restricted the number of vendors and guests because of the UN bombing over the summer. It was still quite festive though-- they had bratwurst and waffles, crepes and gluwein, the hot mulled wine that Germans serve at the holidays, AND a frigid shipping container to drink the gluwein in (even with a jacket, I only lasted about 5 minutes in the cold room)… holiday crafts weren't as good as the ones I saw in the morning at the school though. All in all, a very packed and social Saturday,
Today I've done nothing but lounge about at home. Did a load of laundry, some other mundane chores, and spent the majority of the afternoon journaling… detailing my trip to Paris and Brussels, and the holiday weekend. Will be heading to the Chinese restaurant so that we can give Uncle Pitt his Belgian Choc gift… come to think of it, this is my last full week of work, before I leave for the States next week! Countdown: 11 more days to go! In the meantime, I need to pack and start prepping for interviews again! Eep!
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