Thanksgiving in Brisbane

After an awesome week in Sydney, we have now settled down at University of Queensland in Brisbane for the last three (now two) weeks of school. We're staying in dorms again, so it's a lot like being back at Stanford. Also, it's quite an investment of time and money to get off campus (the city is a 15-minute ferry ride away and the ferry station is a 10-minute walk from the dorm), so I sort of just mosey around our building all day. I've gone to the city a couple of times, but in general, it's just weird to have so much free time. In the next two weeks, we have an essay, a small presentation, a huge research paper, and a big presentation, but we just have "study days" where we have no obligations but to study. So it's weird to have so much time to do nothing compared to our jam-packed schedules of the weeks before. Also, it's super easy to procrastinate (which is why I'm blogging... haha).

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Australia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but since we are Americans, we got the day off, as well as Friday. We decided to have a traditional Thanksgiving anyway, so we cooked our own turkey, pumpkin pie, yams, and all that goodness. This was a lot of fun - all 47 of us pulled together to cook a huge feast for everyone. The dorm chefs let us have control of their kitchen. They have the reputation of being the best dining hall on campus, and they definitely have the equipment to go with that. I made stuffed mushrooms and picked the herbs fresh from their giant herb garden outside. Everything was really fresh, too. There's no such thing as canned pumpkin in Australia, for example - my friends used real pumpkin to make pumpkin cookies and pie. The chefs were super friendly and helpful and didn't seem to mind at all that we were taking over their kitchen with our haphazard cooking skills, even though they still had to cook dinner for the other residents staying in the dorm. This was especially surprising, since our group almost always ends up irritating food or hostel staff, who yell at us and get annoyed at us because they don't like dealing with such a loud and raucous group of Americans (although we're really not that bad!!). For dinner, we invited our programs staff, including our teaching assistants, our professors, and our program administrators. The food was amazing - I was so impressed by the talent we have in our group, and by the end of the meal, I was so full. It was by far the best Thanksgiving I've ever had.

Anyway, I've put up a ton of pictures, so check them out! There are 7 picture posts - some will be on the next page, so don't miss those!