Knock on Wood

I sent my brother David to Thanksgiving dinner with an update about my year for him to read in my place. In it, I said I was thankful that we hadn't had a freeze here yet. So, of course, as I was walking to Adam and Olya's on Friday, I saw a young boy skidding from one length of a long puddle to the other, unabashedly enjoying the first ice of the season. The city now looks more like the mental image I had of Russia, with trees covered in frost and the sky a low, cold blanket of grey. Thankfully, my apartment is still warm.
Speaking of thanks (trust me, that transition was completely organic), I enjoyed both my Friday Thanksgiving and the one we had at our apartment on Saturday. Adam and Olya have really been great about making me feel wonderful and welcome, and Olya is a really fantastic cook. She even made green bean casserole complete with homemade onion things on top. A lot more has to be made from scratch here, which is inconvenient at times but seems to have really good results. I was the only non-missionary at this gathering of Americans, and it was great to hear all that these men and women were thankful for. Mike, a short-term missionary who is here, and I stayed late as the four of us watched Becoming Jane and then talked late into the night.
I was a little nervous about our Saturday dinner as I've never done anything close to preparing a Thanksgiving meal. We were really excited about the prospect of turkey but prepared to settle for cooking a couple of chickens if the turkey couldn't be found. Thankfully, we did find a 4 1/4 kg turkey (9.4 lbs). Though at about 40 bucks it was probably a bit pricy, sometimes you just have to spring for it. I went to class and Megan got to prepare and cook the turkey, as well as mashed potatoes and some green bean casserole, all of which came out very well. I got back to finish preparing some dinner rolls and to make some pumpkin pie. The Russians hadn't ever seen dinner rolls before, at least not the kind that are rolled, and asked if they had meat inside them. I'll explain why that's funny in a different post. The pumpkin pie wasn't especially pumpkiny, but it did taste good. The crust was good, too. I think I might have assisted in the making of a crust before, but I never really paid attention, an oversight I regretted as I tried to figure out how the crumbly mess I had in a frying pan (we don't actually have mixing bowls in our apartment) was supposed to look flat and appealing in a pie tin. The result just went to show that anything with that much butter in it is going to be pretty hard to mess up. The meal also included cranberry sauce made by Sarah from Russian cranberrys and gravy prepared by Randy, the Canadian. While the conversation at the dinner did keep going back to Stallone, Rambo, and Schwarzenneger, I did enjoy sharing Thanksgiving with this international group.
After church today I got to go to lunch with Adam, Olya, Mike, and kids to the house of a couple from the church. This was the first time I had been in an actual house here in Russia. It was very nice and impressive. Originally it was an old train car, but it has been improved and expanded to the point that only in the entry way where we hung our coats could you see a hint of the original. I kind of hope they leave that siding exposed. In America some people would pay a lot of money to put in an accent piece like that to hint at being rustic. The people themselves were also neat and the son, who I think was about eleven, read from his English book for us.
Now I'm pretty tired, and I do have to teach in the morning, so I'm going to try to call home and then head to bed.