Thanksgiving in New Zealand

Thursday was Thanksgiving!

I had a blast with the students doing different Thanksgiving. We started off the morning discussing America and traditions we have for the holiday. The students were very interested in finding out about the different foods we ate as well as about the weather that we have. It is so very different for them because their Christmas holiday is summer, whereas for us Thanksgiving is the big mark off for winter and snow to begin! We discussed being thankful for everything in our lives and why we should stop and give thanks. I did not get into the whole discussion of the history of Thanksgiving. I figured the students would get lost and confused with the discrepancies of our Pilgrim and Indian Feast facts and fictions. So we skipped the history lesson and discussed the values of Thanksgiving instead.

The students then each made "Thankful Turkey's"! These were adorable turkeys with five items or people they were thankful for written on the feathers. I absolutely loved some of their items: Their families, their friends, money, Miss May and Miss Scheibe, and games were some of the popular answers. However my personal favorite was the student who included: hot chips (french fries) on his list of items he was most thankful for! haha!

We took a great picture of our class with their turkeys and then headed outside for a game of Capture the Flag. (I figured this was close enough to the American tradition of playing football on turkey day!)

That afternoon I shared with the students a lot of pictures I had from home. The ones they were most interested in were my photos of winter in Wisconsin. Most of these students have seen snow, but not to the extent that we get each year in WI. They have seen maybe only light snows which melt the next day. So when they saw pictures of 3 feet of snow, sledding, and all the snow suit gear we have they were astounded! It was fun sharing all these stories and chatting with the children.

My thanksgiving dinner here was not quite up to par with traditional turkey dinners. We had had a rotisserie chicken, salads, asparagus, and potatoes. A little different from the usual turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry dinner but to my benefit I could still wear my pants comfortably at the end of the day! haha

I baked two pumpkin pies as well! They turned out so perfectly! I made the pie crust from scratch and then found a great recipe for the pie filling. They were delicious. David wanted to make decorations on the top of the pie with the extra crust dough. So one of our pies has a little man walking down the beach with a sun in the background. The man is complete with the New Zealand Movember Mustache ("Movember" is mustache November, a promotional event for raising money for prostate cancer. The men all grow mustaches and get sponsored by their family and friends, then the money goes to the prostate cancer foundation). The pie tasted amazing if I do say so myself!

The next day (Friday) I brought in the second pie for the class. A lot of the students had never had pumpkin pie. In fact most of them were confused by how my pie looked. To them a pie is a meat pie (mince meat cooked inside a pastery -similar to a chicken pot pie without the veggies). So when I brought in my Pumpkin Pie I had to explain that it is a dessert and would taste sweet. We cut the pie up into 28 little slices and everyone had a taste. Afterwards we took a vote on who liked it and who didn't. A lot of them loved it and the ones who didn't said they liked it at the start but then felt sick from eating it too quickly, so I guess that's still a compliment to my baking skills! Only three weeks of school left!