The Thanksgiving Post

This post is especially for Grandma Martin, possibly our most loyal reader. Thanks Grams.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I guarantee you, we miss everyone.

I know I've said it before, but we're having a great time here. With the time difference, Thanksgiving was yesterday for us. We're currently camped out at Hang Dog, a climbers haven in NZ. The camping is cheap, the people are friendly, and the rocks (for all the die-hards) are close. I'm proud to say that the four of us are well on our way to becoming die hard climbers, although we're certainly not there yet. Hang Dog was a place we were really excited to get to. In the month that I've been here we've had a rough schedule of the places we want to go to, but the only solid date we had nailed down was that we WERE going to be in Takaka for Thanksgiving so we could celebrate it amongst the famously friendly residents of Hang Dog. Turns out that was a pretty good plan. We arrived at camp a couple of days ago and were a little intimidated by the large amount of people here who all seemed to know each other. We made a few friends at the BEAUTIFUL swimming hole and talked around at camp and realized that 1. There were quite a few other Americans here (including two girls from Santa Barbara!) and 2. the non Americans were all pretty interested in giving Thanksgiving a try.

We decided we couldn't expect a full traditional Thanksgiving spread given our limitations (a lack of money and the restrictions of camping stoves instead of ovens) so told everyone to bring whatever they felt like to our little shindig. The girls and I prepared mashed potatoes and a glorious camp-stove baked apple crisp. I hand-whipped cream for the top of the crisp. I'm tell you, this was gourmet.
Our table was buzzing with a gazzilion different accents and campstoves. Before we ate everything from curry to kumara soup to stuffing, we gathered round and everybody shared something they were thankful for (real cute). Responses included my beautiful traveling companions, sweet rocks, airplanes to fly here, Hang Dog, and Connie the Commodore. So, we spent the night with 20+ other campers all gathered around eating wonderful food and enjoying each others company. The feasting ended with campers doing Tim Tam slams- bite the ends off of a Tim Tam, a chocolate covered cookie, and using it like a straw suck up hot milk then throw the whole thing in your mouth... mmm... It's even better than it sounds, too. Megan, Danielle, and I stayed up until 2 in the morning laughing and getting to know the neighbors, which is a little later than our usual 9 or 10 o'clock bedtime.

I'm not sure if I can explain how incredible our makeshift Thanksgiving was. There was a definite sense of community around the little table (standing room only) and our little picnic blanket. I had countless conversations over the night with people talking about how great it felt. It was a good feeling to get to share a holiday that we love so much with people who had never celebrated it before. Definitely a cool experience.