Expat Thanksgiving

Now that it's almost Christmas, I figured I needed to get to posting about Thanksgiving. I had not spent Thanksgiving without my family before, so I was in for a new experience. It was also interesting to have Thanksgiving in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving (although my Irish Politics professor wished all us Americans a Happy one!). All of the stores were open when we really needed them, so we didn't need to frantically get to the store before it closed at 4:00 PM.

Jenna came over from Paris so we could spend the holiday together! We ended up celebrating on Saturday because of the way our schedules worked out - I had class until 6 on Thursday and we went to a concert Friday.

As a matter of coincidence, one of Jenna's favourite bands, Kasabian, was in Dublin on the Friday she was in town. They are a British band that I like to describe as the post-punk version of the Byrds who grew up listening to techno every once and a while. Kasabian was playing at Dublin's biggest venue, the very new O2 Arena. All 14,000 seats were full for this show, and for good reason. They were very theatrical, incorporating LCD screens, short films, and even a man dressed as Vlad the Impaler (the namesake of their new single) into the show. It was a hell of a lot of fun, especially the 5+ minute Ole, Ole, Ole chant accompanied by 10 foot wide beach ball bouncing around the crowd.

Thanksgiving itself was a lot of fun. Jenna and I took over the kitchen and whipped up some magic. Jenna masterfully crafted some pecan pies, and we both got our hands in the dressing, lemon-garlic-butter-sage-and-thyme roasted bird (because of the oven size it was a chicken), brown sugar and whiskey sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes. Jenna, 3 of my roommates, and I sipped on wine and cider while enjoying good craic and food.