Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

This is going to be posted in Canada just as most of you will be digging into a perfectly roasted Turkey, with mashed potatoes, veggies, and gravy, oh so much gravy.  So we wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

We were super lucky this year, that one of Whitney's friends, Robyn, and her girlfriend Whitney (it's a little confusing), are located just North of London, and made sure that this weekend would not pass without having a turkey roasted and shared with good friends.  We're so lucky that we were included in their Canadian Thanksgiving plans.

Thanksgiving Table, decorated and ready.  Including red, orange and yellow foil maple leaf decorations from Ontario.  Thanks Ron and Kerry.

Sooo delicious.  

The meal was fantastic, and the company really great.  We had 5 Canadians, two Brits, a Spaniard, an Israeli and an Irish.  If we didn't drive on the wrong side of the road to get there, it might have just as well been in Canada.

Our Thanksgiving Gang.  Thanks Robyn and Whitney for pulling it together.

And a goofy one

As we went around mentioning what we were thankful, I was reminded about the unspoken tradition in Canada, that if you know someone who doesn't have a Thanksgiving dinner to go to, you bring them home with you.  I can't count the number of times we've had a friend or colleague of one of my cousins come in for the Thanksgiving meal with us.  It reminded me of one of the best things about being Canadian, the sense of community and importance of involving not just family, but friends, far and wide in your important celebrations.  I was very thankful to have friends who believed it was important to include us in their celebration.

The rest of last week went by in a bit of a blur.  I'm getting regular coursework now, and Kristin's job is starting to settle into a normal routine, so we didn't have much exciting going on to share.  However last Wednesday night, we did go out to a try-a-dive with the SCUBA club on campus.  They offer a certification course and practice dives throughout the year for a ridiculously low price.  Both Kristin and I are signing up, me to get certified, and her to get re-certified.  Kristin was a bit surprised by how quickly they moved here.  To make sure you're going to be ok going through the practice, they let you try out a dive in the swimming pool.  This entailed about 90 seconds of instruction, and in the pool you go.  Floating ok, fins comfortable, alright, underwater we go.  We both got about 10 minutes to swim around on the bottom of the pool before the next novices got their turn to try out.  It was a surreal feeling, but I enjoyed it, and we're looking forward to doing the course work and training on Wednesday nights until Christmas.  We'll have our open water certification in the spring.

Kris is asking me to post the latest fun food from the UK.

For your consideration as you dig into a Turkey dinner, there are surely some poor students in the UK eating this tonight:

On that lovely note.  Enjoy your Turkey.  We're sad we're not there, but are sending our love.  At least we're thankful we can communicate easily enough to send that message to everyone.

GO JAYS