Thanksgiving in Kaohsiung

Today wasn't Thanksgiving. It couldn't have been. I got up early, put on a t-shirt, skirt and sandals, bought an iced coffee, went to an RT competition (in which both of my schools competed), came home, took a nap, went to school again--oh, and then taught Thanksgiving, so I guess it must have been--but then I came home, went searching for turkey, and ended up eating steak at a Canadian restaurant.

And this is Thanksgiving? Really? You're serious? Huh. I didn't even consume any turkey.

I've already detailed many of my Thanksgiving teaching tactics; what I didn't mention is that, on Monday, after I finished my spiel about how the most important traditions of Thanksgiving are to eat a feast, spend time with family, and say what you are thankful for (spot the vocab words!), a student asked, through my co-teacher, "But, Teacher Bekah, why aren't YOU going home for Thanksgiving?"

...

It's times like these that I really wish someone had invented a teleportation device, already!

But they haven't and so my Thanksgiving was spent here, cheering on my students and taking a prohibited (and, as a result of its secrecy, terrible quality-ed) video of them, then describing what stuffing was to a class full of 6th graders, whose wrinkled faces at the idea of it cooking inside the turkey were priceless, not least of which because they closely mirrored my own face whenever I come into close contact with stinky tofu or pig intestines.

On my way into school today, I saw my commute friend Rob (he's an English teacher from New York who works across the street from my school; we met en route one day and we're perfecting the art of 40 second stoplight conversations), who was driving another English teacher, Debbie, and they informed me that they were spending Thanksgiving with a friend who had had the foresight to special order a turkey and plan a Thanksgiving dinner. They also told me that last year they had eaten turkey at a local American restaurant. They gave me the name, but I was on a scooter at a stop light--not exactly the time to write it down.

The search was on. A quick Google search for Western/American restaurants in Kaohsiung provided a decently long list--I'm going to need to keep exploring, I think--but only one which looked remotely like the name I thought they told me. I remembered that it was a pub & grill type place, and that it sounded like a last name.

My hypothesis? Foster Hewitt's.

I looked up directions, grabbed Analicia, who also didn't have dinner plans, and set off down one of Kaohsiung's busiest roads, down which apparently Foster Hewitt's lay. When we got there, one thing immediately struck me: a Canadian flag. Yep, it was Western all right, but decidedly Canadian; posters, hockey jerseys and other memorabilia from Ontario crowded the walls.

It was still a very nice place, but not exactly somewhere that would be serving turkey on American Thanksgiving.

Reconciled, I ordered a steak and fresh lime soda. Nothing even remotely related to Thanksgiving food, but at least it was high-quality Western food; in a lot of ways, it beat my back-up plan of a Subway turkey sandwich. And the bartender was Western, and it was oddly comforting to be able to be served by a native speaker of English, as weird as that sounds. At least a little something of home in a native accent.

Ah, Thanksgiving dinner.

My mom complained last week when I described how great the Thanksgiving dinner in Taipei was rather than talk about how much I miss her cooking. Well, last week wasn't Thanksgiving. Today was. And I do miss her cooking--hers, and Aunt Linda's, and Uncle Pat and Aunt Christy's, and Karen's, and Jillian's, and Diana's, and Rosa's, and Joshua's, and Heather's, and everyone else in my family who cooks's. I wish I were home, eating moist turkey and flavorful party potatoes and oddly delicious stuffing and the many, many pies. I wish I were hanging out with my family and watching the parade right now, feeling guilty about not being able to do more to help.

Because, as I told my kids, that's what Thanksgiving is about: eating a feast and spending time with family.

But there was a third thing: being thankful. And I am, of course, thankful first and foremost for my family. But I'm also thankful that I'm here. I love all my wonderful students, co-teachers, host family, fellow ETAs, and other friends here, and I am so thankful they're in my life, and that I have the opportunity to be in theirs. I'm thankful that I have been blessed with a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, which is itself the chance of a lifetime. I'm thankful that I even have this dilemma, that I have to want to be in two places at once, that I have two potential places to spend the holiday.

Because today was Thanksgiving, no matter how I spent it. And turkey, as it turns out, is optional.