We had a very different Thanksgiving this year in China. Sue, Stacia and friend Dawn Hall from Ohio traveled with the varsity basketball teams from Concordia to the Great Wall Tournament in Beijing over the Thanksgiving weekend. They played teams from Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea, Beijing and Shanghai. They played their hearts out and came away the victors! This is one tough team to beat! Stacia is the starting point guard. After the playing was finished the host school put on a Thanksgiving awards banquet where we had turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and many other dishes to pig out on. While we were there, Rich and the other kids celebrated Thanksgiving with our small group from church. Rich told the Thanksgiving story to the adults and children there. Most of our group are from other countries so they really enjoyed hearing about the history of our Thanksgiving tradition. They also all enjoyed the traditional feast with turkey's closest cousin, chicken (turkey is very expensive here, hard to find and the non american women don't know how to cook one), sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, squash, pumpkin pie and more. It was a wonderful evening of celebration and fellowship for them. It was the first Thanksgiving that we have been apart in 21 years of marriage. I have bought a small turkey costing about $48 and will cook it for our family Christmas. This will also be different this year as we will be staying in Asia and vacationing in Sabah, East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. It will also be the first Christmas that we will not be with our families from home. We will miss everyone greatly. We have gotten a fresh tree purchased from the school holiday bazaar (delivered in a pot and costing $20) and decorated it the best we can with ornaments we brought from home. I don't know what type of evergreen it is, but the branches are not strong so we had to pick out the lightest of all the ornaments to hang on it. Rich bought Christmas lights (very expensive and imported from Germany) and our oversized Charlie Brown tree now stands proudly in our living room. If definately feels different this season as we are not inundated with the commercialism of Christmas in the stores here. We will share more of our family Christmas celebration after our trip to Malaysia. Look for our Christmas letter arriving by email this year (if Rich can get a few moments out of his extremely busy work schedule to put it together).
