Then came a gratitude assignment from Positive Psychology. I almost always hate these assignments, but this time I had to write a letter to anyone that I wanted to about why I am grateful for them. I wrote about Grandpa Chuck. Ideally, we were supposed to send the letters to the person, but I'm pretty sure that grandpa still got it.
Then comes Thursday morning with a 7AM wake up call from my father. I'm skype is now forwarded to my cellphone, and now I am missing calls all of the time. I have to figure it out. Once it was a more reasonable time to get up, I went to the gym, showered, changed and got all of the stuff that I needed ready and headed for Sheva Shook, to get a chicken for Joseph (the butcher tried to get my number, but I received a good price on the chicken), then the walk to Tiv Tam, to get the turkey with Joseph. So I asked the butcher (in hebrew) for the turkey that is reserved for Talya. He turns to Joseph and asks him if he speaks Hebrew and to translate what I said! He says the same thing, and the butcher goes oh! the 8 kilo turkey! 8 kilos! that is more than 16 lbs! I have the little chicken. Joseph has the giant turkey, and we are roaming around the store looking for some other spices that I didn't have and aluminum pans. We bought 6 of those, some to cook in and some for transport.
We go to Joseph's, he has a normal size oven. He prepares his chicken and we start plucking the random feather tips that are stuck in the turkey, to occupy our time for the next 45ish mins. It was a lot of fun. Then we prepared the turkey with Thyme, Rosemary, a little bit of garlic powder, and some salt to make it brown. Once the chicken was done, it was time for the turkey. The Turkey was in and we had some errands to go run. We came back after a hour and still had like three hours to kill. Off to the balcony...it is in steep competition to being my favorite place in Herzliya with Talya's balcony. I change into my Thanksgiving clothes, and the turkey is ready and we head to get a cab to go to Anna and Sarah's apartment (a 4 min walk from where I actually live, or a 1/2 hr walk from Joseph).
Thanksgiving dinner was amazing. It was a bunch of psych kids and a ton of food: smashed sweet potato and regular potatoes, greenbeans, salad, my turkey, shnitzle, joseph's chicken, wine, sangria, cookies, apple pie, and good company.
After dinner we were all planning on heading to Theodore's, local bar, but when I got home and finished plucking the rest of the meat off of the turkey and put it away in the fridge, I wasn't in the mood so I cleaned my apartment and went to sleep...only to wake up bright and early for ulpan.
This was the first friday after Ulpan that I didn't take a nap. For I had things to do because Olivia was coming for Shabbat. And most importantly she did not get lost walking from the bus stop to me! Together we made my mother's thanksgiving sweet potato recipes, and it was amazing! For shabbat, we were at my neighbors/my real apartment, we had left over turkey, my sweet potatoes, some salad, challah, humus, and Rebeca's apple crumble. It was a very nice thanksgiving shabbat.
Saturday morning/lunch was repeat of friday night. After breakfast, I had to pull Olivia away from their porch, also my favorite spot in Herzliya, and we left for the mall. Shivat HaKochavin, Seven Stars, is open on shabbat! and I have never seen that mall more packed in my life. Shopping with Olivia in Israel was an adventure, to say the least! But she got stocked for a winter in Jerusalem, even though winter has yet to arrive here. Upon return to the apartment it was time for round 4 for turkey.
Saturday night the turkey was completed. It was 200 shekels and worth every agura (or penny). It was really nice having Olivia stay with me for thanksgiving/shabbat. And it just reminds me how nice it is to have close family when I am so far away from my family. And that I cannot wait for Erica to join us here. It is going to get crazy!
I cannot believe that it is almost channukah and december! boy has this year flown by!
Speak soon,
Rachel
hey missed you a lot this thanksgiving, not sure if mom told you but we met talya's aunt. who is joseph? im confused. at first i thought you were talking about the butcher named joseph or maybe you were making a reference to the torah? hahaha. 3 more weeks <3
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