Thanksgiving Abounds

Even though this was my first Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. it was still quite celebrated here in Pohnpei.  I was blessed with the opportunity to celebrate several times throughout the weekend.  I started it of on Thanksgiving Day with just a small "Thanksgiving-ish" meal for Laurel and me.  Turkey is not much of an option here, so I opted for roasted chicken instead.  I picked up a local pumpkin and local yam.  It was my first time to cook local yams so I got some advice for a few locals before attempting my own.  I was told boiling them was the best, so I turned them into mashed potatoes.  Throw on a side salad and we had quite the Pohnpeian Thanksgiving feast!

To top it off, Maryanna surprised us with dessert!  Let me tell you, anything cooked in coconut milk is absolutely delicious.  You can't go wrong!

Uht pilawa (bananas cooked in coconut milk)

Laurel and I decided to end the meal by sharing all the things we were thankful for starting with all the letters of Thanksgiving.  It was a lot of fun as we had a mixture of serious and silly things.  It went something like this:

T - teaching
H - happiness
A - avocados in the market (or arsenic in apple seeds that give them an almond flavor)
N - novelty of each day
K - kindness of strangers
S - sunrises and sunsets
G - grace
I - infinite love
V - volume control (when you can't control the volume of the dogs, roosters, cats, pigs, or people it makes you even more thankful for the volumes you can control)
I - income
N - night skies
G -generosity of people we've met here

You may or may not know that it is an Eastup family tradition to have a bonfire the Friday after Thanksgiving to roast hotdogs and make s'mores.  This is one of my favorite times of year, so I decided I needed to bring it to Pohnpei.  I had been saving coconut shells to burn in our little fire pit on the porch in hopes that this event could happen.  I invited my host family and my WorldTeach family to join in the special occasion.  I was so thankful I got to introduce more people to the fun of the Thanksgiving fire, especially since s'mores are not a known item here. Now this in not an easy feat.  Laurel and I literally went to every single grocery store in Kolonia to round up all the needed items.  Wall-Mart has hotdogs, buns, and graham crackers, Yoshie has the chocolate and marshmallows, Palm Terrace use to have graham crackers but just sold out, A-One has mustard, and Ace has ketchup.  It's such an adventure, but I was just thankful to finally find all the things we needed.

My months of collecting coconut shells

We have made fire!

Mike's excited!

Hotdogs are roasting

Hotdogs are Jay-Jay's favorite; by the end of
the night he had eaten 3 hotdogs and 2 s'mores.
His little tummy wasn't feeling so great :)

The lovely ladies I am so thankful to live with

After hotdogs it was s'more time!!!  For several, this was their first time to ever enjoy the delight-fulness of  an ooey-gooey s'more.  I love first-timers!

Ready for assembly!

The fire had burned down to the really hot embers, which
are perfect for getting the marshmallows golden brown
on the outside and gooey on the inside

Jay-Jay went straight for the double

Maryanna did a great job of following the instructions of
proper s'more assembly

Eat up!  You're not doing it right unless you have sticky marshmallow oozing out :)

We love s'mores!

  S'mores are a hit!  It won't be long before they're the next big craze in Pohnpei I'm sure. 

And to cap off the night with a bang, Mike brought sparklers for us to play with.  With the weather and the sparklers I had to remind myself that we were celebrating Thanksgiving and not the 4th of July.

It was obviously a great night filled with many things to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving celebration #3 happened Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Embassy residences.  One of the ladies that works for the embassy is great about hosting one and all for monthly dinners.  This month she decided to make it a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was complete with turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie!

The whole spread

A variety of salads and breads

The traditional turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce

Can't forget the dessert table!

The whole night was finished off with a great view of the sunset.

I feel like I got it all.  I had a Pohnpeian style Thanksgiving, Eastup Thanksgiving, and a traditional American Thanksgiving.  I am truly blessed in so many ways!

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

What an awesome God we have!  I am eternally thankful for all He has done in my life!  And I am thankful He has made you part of my life :)

Life is unpredictable...

...and that's what keeps it so exciting!  It seems that lately things have happened that just weren't quite expected.  We'll start with Saturday.  We had been looking forward to the next 5k all month.  This one was called the Green Steps 5k, and it was an environmental awareness fun run being held across the FSM.  That means people were doing it in Yap, Kosrae and Chuuk as well.  We were informed that you had 3 options: 1. Run/Walk the 5k  2. Pick up trash  3. Plant a tree.  That is what we were expecting as we arrived bright and early to register.  We planned to run the race and then pick up trash so that we could get in two of the options.  In actuality we paid to pick up trash (I guess we really paid for the t-shirt).  Everyone was expected to walk the 5k with trash bags and gloved hands to pick up all the trash along the route.  Now I'm not complaining because it was a great way to clean up Kolonia; it just wasn't what we had predicted the morning to look like.  It turned out to be a really fun time of meeting new people while we did something nice for the community.  It's something I've been saying all along that I wanted to do and this gave me the extra push to just do it.

the "free" t-shirt

I just love the coconut logo :)

Many students showed up for the early morning event.  I
was impressed!

Lori and Laurel gearing up for the trash race

Hey, Zihla's not trash!

Gloves on, ready to go

We were the stragglers who picked up the
little pieces are also important for making
it all look so nice

My lovely trash compadres

Post-race market trip - we discovered a new kind of banana

I love my bananas!

Thinking it was a race day, I of course had planned on somehow incorporating mango into the day.  I decided to go ahead with it.  You can never have too much mango!  This time I decided to use Amchoor (Mango Powder) to cook an Indian dish.  It was part of Laurel's Indian spice collection that she brought and we have come to appreciate so much.  I couldn't even begin to predict how this would turn out, but I figured it would be fun to try.

Pick some up at your local Asian market!

Chana Masala with homemade naan

Boy were we glad I tried something new.  It could probably go down as one of my best meals ever.  All the Indian flavors melded together so well.  The ingredients may look a little intimidating, but I'm going to include a link to the recipe anyway.  These spices are worth the investment.  Here it is: Chana Masala   Now the naan could have used some help, but it was fun anyway :)  Another mango success!

Sunday brought an unexpected sighting.  I went to lunch with some friends after church at Joy Restaurant.  Lo and behold, there sits the president of the FSM enjoying a casual lunch with a friend.  No secret service, no black suburbans; just President Manny Mori.

Can you spot him?  He's in the white polo in the back.

I think it must be so nice to still be treated as any other person out for a nice Sunday lunch.

Finally, I like to keep my students' lives unpredictable too!  Will she come in with a pop quiz?  Will she make us sing a song to learn the quadratic formula?  Will she make us work in groups?  Will she, heaven forbid, make guys and girls work together?  Will she come in with cupcakes?!  This week the last 3 questions were yes.  Yes, I'm going to assign you groups to work with new people and graph together.  But, yes, I am also going to give you cupcakes because you are wonderful!  I love working with my students!  Here are my MS100 College Algebra students:

stretching & shrinking parabolas

Wecklew and Mavrick are doing a great job of supervising
aren't they?

All hard at work.  Love it!

I was so sneaky they didn't even know they were being
photographed

Jennifer, Tricia, Eiko, Don

Selihn, Jeff, Florence, Axton (former Texan!)

Macy, Ally, Larinda, Dexter

Johnel, Kyumi, Andrea, Yorang

Latricia, Shirley-Ann, Ria Mae, Bryan
(note the funfetti cupcakes!!!)

Saferia & Merleen (please note that the two supervisors
from above have now managed to take off before the picture;
what great team members!)

After class was all over and I was just getting my stuff all together I noticed that Bryan was hanging around.  I asked if he needed something and he came up and said, "Thank you for the cupcake teacher.  I thought maybe you made them for my birthday."  Me: "Is it your birthday today?"  Bryan: "Yeah!"  There was no way I could play off that I had planned it all along, but it made me happy that it worked out so perfectly.  It is such a joy to work with these students.  They always impress me with their hard work and desire to give me their best effort.

If life were predictable, it just wouldn't be nearly as much fun! :)