What Do You Call Turkey Day If There's No Turkey?

Since my wife has decided to abandon our blog after only a couple of months I suppose it is up to me to give you a reason to keep visiting.

As I write this I am looking out the window wishing I had brought my camera to school today. We’ve had snow the last couple of days and although the students at my school have done their best to dispose of the snow on the ground by throwing it at one another (and pretending to throw it at me) there is still a decent amount on our playground. And by playground I mean a huge square dirt field.

Every day after school our school baseball team practices outside in this dirt playground. They practice hitting and fielding. Sometimes I stop to watch for a couple of minutes on my way home. They of course play all their games elsewhere (on a real baseball diamond I hope) and I’m pretty sure the season ended a month or so ago, but they are just determined to be ready for the new season in March or April. Anyways, I digress. Since it is impossible to practice at all effectively on a frozen pile of dirt they drive a truck around the playground with a large metal rake attached to the back. This usually does the job. I’m assuming the snow that has been trampled down by the students until it is a sheet of ice mixed into the dirt has made smoothing out the field much more difficult. As a result the truck is now driving around the yard with about 5 or 6 baseball players crouched on top of the rake trailing behind it. I can only imagine this is done to add more weight to the rake so it can dig into the ground better. Of course to my eye it just looks like an accident waiting to happen. I can tell from the mud down the backs of some of their pants and jackets that a few have fallen off a couple of times. My words do little justice in describing the situation. I’ll have to remember to bring my camera to school the next time it snows.

I’m back after an hour of teaching class and it looks like the baseball team has given up. The van is doing laps around the playground area still, but the players appear to have gone home. There's a good chance the field is in worse shape now than when they started.

Today is Thanksgiving for those who living in the land of the free. For everyone else in the world it's just another Thursday. We're trying to make it special by having dinner with the other foreign teachers we know. There will be 4 Yankees, 3 Canucks and a Kiwi at dinner tonight. Since none of us have an oven to fit anything larger than a pie pan we're going to have chicken instead of turkey. Our friends have however made a pumpkin pie and an apple pie. Meg's made stuffing and cornbread and I've heard rumours of gravy. It should be a fun gathering. I'm hoping it will help me put back on the weight that I've lost since coming here. Winter is coming and it is always good to have some extra insulation. Especially in the frigid temperatures I have to work in.