Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Count Your Many Blessings

...every doubt will fly!

This will be short, but I wanted to record my second Thanksgiving dinner experience.  Joel got invited to Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend at a family friend's house, the Butters, in Shanghai, and he brought me and Seth along.  Before we left, we ate at Carl's Jr. at the Nanjing South Railway Station!  It was great - much better than Carl's Jr. in Malaysia - and they had actual portobello mushrooms on the mushroom swiss burger.  Yum.

The high speed rail is so convenient here - I wish we had it in the States.  You go through security in seconds, get on the train, and get to your destination comfortably and quickly.  We finally arrived at the Butters' house around 10 pm, and they were putting the younger kids to bed.  They have 5 kids, and they've been in China since shortly after they were married.  They actually remind me a lot of my family - I think we would have been friends, had my parents been a bit younger and lived in China.  Friday night we stayed up late and watched Mystery Men - it was funny, but probably one of those watch-once-and-done movies.

Saturday morning, we got up and helped prepare for dinner - they had 20 or so people over (again reminding me of my family), so we helped set up tables and such.  Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.  It was fantastic!  Way better than the branch dinner, and the branch dinner was great.  We had two enormous turkeys, stuffing, yams, salad, fresh homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, jello, and homemade pumpkin pies for dessert (six of them, which Sister Butters made on Friday and warned us not to eat Friday night or face serious consequences)!  We sat outside and played with their youngest child, Dorothy (Dot) on the lawn - she made us close our eyes while she hid berries and had us look for them.  Oh to be a child again and find joy in such simple things!

After dinner, Seth and I went out looking around for apartments for his internship here in a couple months. He's working at a neuroscience research lab that focuses specifically on cancer, which is exactly what he wants to do.  I wish I were that confident in what I want to do with my life.  Anyway, we took the subway for 40 minutes or so, got off and walked around the area near his internship.  We looked for newspapers with classifieds, but didn't find any.  It's a nice area, though, and he should be able to find something when he gets there in February.  I'd really like to intern in Shanghai, but at the moment it's looking more likely that I'll be in Beijing.

Sunday, we went to church in Shanghai, but it ended up being the Asia Area broadcast that we already saw in church in Nanjing.  I learned a few new things this time, however.  After that, we headed for home.

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