Greg and Kat's blog

… was definitely interesting, in a good way. I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Mukta’s place. She’s one of Sabrina’s (my boss Keith’s wife) grad students. She’s from India, as were the majority of the dinner guests – either grad students or post-docs. The other guests were Mukta’s Japanese friend from Duke and her boyfriend and another guy from the Duke lab. Both Duke guys were African American, making the two of them and me the only Americans there. So, throughout the night we were asked “is this right?” or “are we doing this right?” referring to the set-up of the food. It was the first Thanksgiving for many of the guests, so things like the canned cranberry sauce were a mystery. I had to explain that it just gets put in a bowl and is eaten with the turkey, well in our case chicken. Apparently they don’t have turkeys in India (at least noone at the party had had turkey while in India, and had only heard of them when they came here). So, I think they were all a bit intimidated to try to cook a turkey. Had I known I would have offered to cook it, but alas I didn’t know. Oh well. Instead we had roasted chicken which was just as good!
After dinner there was dancing. Salsa music was played, and one of the guys who had been taking salsa lessons taught a few a steps. Then Punkabi music was played and Mukta showed us how to dance to that, and then the hip-hop came on and Marcel took over the dancing. It was a good time.
Today I exercised a lot of control and did NOT go to the after-Thanksgiving sales. The stores were open at 5 am, but I was good and didn’t go. Instead, I spent my day doing laundry, mailing Christmas presents, and feeding the birds. I’d say that took a lot of willpower on my part.

Only 12 days until I go home!