Born In The USA

It was awesome having Pseudo-Thanksgiving with my Yantai friends. Ron and his wife brought their new baby so in some ways it really was like a family. A crazy dysfunctional family, with a lot of alcohol and trashtalk, but still.

We got takeaway from the Korean place near the school, something that’s almost like American barbequed chicken. Will put on a DVD of music videos, to make our T-day even more American. Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen and Bon Jovi. The MTV actually made it surreal, because I could remember hearing that Kurt Cobain was dead, and now I’m watching his videos on Thanksgiving in China a decade later.

There was a bit of the inevitable imagining what our families were doing now. Right now, my mom’s on page two, line twelve, of the Thanksgiving List. What’s your family doing? Later we had an American chocolate cake, only it was actually a chocolate-tomato cake.

I brought my camera to record my crazy Yantai Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, my batteries died. I was annoyed, but three bottles of wine later, when we were singing Bon Jovi and Springsteen, and I might have been showing my Jersey Girl roots just a little bit, I was glad there was no camera around.

This morning, I called my folks and heard the whole room shouting “Happy Thanksgiving To Meg Now!” See, my mom brought the phone into the dining room and told everyone to… oh never mind.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.