Thanksgiving in New Zealand!

Our Kiwi Thanksgiving was a great success! We spent most of Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday working on dinner preparations. Although I wasn't in the kitchen the whole time, I spent the majority of my days in there overseeing things and helping out. It was a lot of fun and everyone did their job and the kitchen was never chaotic. Ria said this is the most relaxed she's seen everyone around Thanksgiving in years.

Lots of peeling and mashing and mixing later, things were really starting to come together. We had the whole walk-in chiller filled with food prep and things that just needed to be popped into the oven. I made 4 batches of my infamous apple crisp and helped Sam with catering her pavlova (it came out beautifully!).

While some of us were slaving away in the kitchen, we had a committee hard at work on decorations. They came up with this really cool menu which included a description of every item on the menu, including who made it. In addition to that, Sarah's mom mailed her a huge package of Turkey Day decorations (table clothes and all) and they used those to decorate the Wharekai and porch. Kate even had the idea to walk down the road and pick wild flowers so that every table would have its own decorative vase (or champagne bottle)!

The weather in the morning looked a bit ominous, and it even rained a little bit. We saw this huge rainbow that went over campus. We could even see both ends of it, touching down on the waters of the Firth of Thames. Luckily the weather cleared out and it was beautiful and sunny for the rest of the afternoon. All the girls dressed up in skirts and dresses and everyone got a little bit more tan.

We put the appetizers out around 3:30 and ate and mingled while the main dishes were heating up. It was great to see people that we haven't seen in a while, like Wi from Te Aroroa and Catherine, Elizabeth's 14 month old daughter. In between courses we played games and chatted and listened to music over the ghetto blaster. It was so surreal to be celebrating Thanksgiving in the hot sun when all of our family was bundled up inside.

Around 4:30 the main dishes were ready to go. Sam and I asked Denny and Janet if they could read a poem in front of the group before we started eating. Us and all of our guests gathered in the Wharekai in the circle and listened and went around sharing our Thanks with everyone. I started to get a little teary-eyed but held it together because I knew that I should save my tears for the last day when we actually have to leave. The cooks went down the line and introduced all of the foods as well as who took part in making them. Finally Sam exclaimed, "Let's eat!" and we piled the food onto our plates.

There was so much food and all of it was so great! My personal favorites were the roasted chicken w/ real gravy, cornbread stuffing, and sweet potato pie. We even had lamb which Anna prepared and it wasn't even dry or tough like I've been told. Everyone ate sooo much, and we still had a ton of leftovers, which we were really happy about. That's the best part of Thanksgiving anyway-- the heaps of leftovers the days after.

We had some volunteers help to clean up and after an hour and a half of sitting around and basking in our thankfulness (I mean gluttony) we got the dessert out. Everyone was so full at that point but it didn't stop us from piling the sweets on our plate even higher. The apple crisp was a hit and Sam's untaking of the Kiwi classic pavlova was a great success!

(All the cooks and bakers having a toast of champagne)

Overall it was a great day and after nearly 2 weeks of everyone being separated into groups for our DRPs, it was nice to have everyone sitting down in one place, the way it should be.