Forgetting Thanksgiving

I got several emails (one really confusing) asking me about celebrating Thanksgiving and to wish me well. If I hadn’t gotten them I would have forgotten all about the holiday. My birthday was the day before and anyone who knows me knows that that day is the center of November for me.
I can’t really remember celebrating Thanksgiving in Taiwan outside of school. Does anyone remember the one last year? Sitting for an hour while a man preached in Chinese and the co-teachers were made to sit against the wall like they were naughty children? You know you do. Or the year before that where we ate questionable turkey at lunch and my hair was insane? You also know you do.
This year I didn’t see a need to even mention the holiday to my co-teachers or wish people Happy Thanksgiving unless I knew they were American. Thursday is considered “Hell Day” here so I was focused on getting through it, packing for my birthday weekend in Seoul with Steph, and going to Korean class (my favorite part of Thursday).
When I got to Korean class they told us that we were going to end an hour early because they thought we wanted to celebrate. Most of us told her no, that we wanted to learn, but she said that the teachers had already decided so we were out of luck.
Natalie and I decided to meet up with some other foreign teachers at TGI Fridays who were celebrating Thanksgiving since we were being made by our Korean teachers to celebrate the holiday. Natalie is from England so I told her that the first Thanksgiving only had Indians and British people so technically she could celebrate it. I had only been to TGI Fridays once here in South Korea and noticed that the menu here is quite different from the menu in America and Taiwan. Very steak heavy. Natalie is a vegetarian and I don’t really eat meat anymore or Western food. I decided to eat a chicken burger and Natalie had a baked potato (It is possible that the first Thanksgiving could have had those food options.) I was so ill after that dinner that I don’t think I will ever go back there. I did have a good time though. All the girls were really nice and I got to learn about other people’s school situation.
So that is how I spent Thanksgiving: teaching middle school, packing, going to class, eating Western food and getting ill. Overall a good day.