Thanksgiving in Dubai

We celebrated our first thanksgiving here in Dubai, and it went off without a hitch! We were a little worried we wouldn’t have anything to do for thanksgiving, but we ended up with an invite to a thanksgiving dinner with 50 of our closest church friends. We are so thankful for Scott & Jennifer Rose who opened their home to all those with nowhere to go. Here in Dubai, unless you are American or lived in America, you wouldn’t really know its thanksgiving at all. Other holidays make themselves known with big store front decorations and window displays, but not thanksgiving. It kind of just sneaks in between Halloween and Christmas. In fact, the only mention I saw of thanksgiving at all was on thanksgiving, at Carrefour, the grocery store, we just so happened to walk by a cooler full of turkeys.

Our Thursday night was spent showing Joe around the Mall of the Emirates, and the indoor ski resort. It was Joe’s last night in town, and that was the last thing we wanted to show him. Steven and I were bummed Joe wasn’t going to get to celebrate thanksgiving with us, but it was ok because all Joe wanted was Taco Bell anyways. Unfortunately, there is no Taco Bell in that mall so we settled on CKP instead.  After dinner, we went back home, picked up Joe’s suitcase and took him to the airport.

Friday morning we woke up at 5am to Skype with all our family back home. I was so excited to get to see family I hadn’t talked to since we left I could hardly sleep the night before. We dropped in to my sister’s house in Long Beach to talk with my mom & aunt and cousins. Then we jumped over to my dad’s house in LA to talk with him and my younger sisters, before finally landing at Steven’s brother’s house to talk with him and his baby, and Steven’s dad.

We are so thankful for our family thousands of miles away and for skype to keep us connected. We also got to skype with our good friends Morgan & Lisa who are in Hawaii, (you can keep up with them at: http://konaandbeyond.blogspot.com/) And Liz & Bernie Keach, whose house we usually crash on thanksgiving anyways.

After all the skyping and short nap, we went to church, came home, and started cooking for our thanksgiving dinner that night. We were in charge of bringing cranberry sauce and an appetizer. Again, a huge thank you to the Rose family who put on an amazing thanksgiving dinner. There were 4 turkeys to feed all 50+ of us, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, corn, yams, rolls and of course, pumpkin pie!! They even had the Lions/Packers game on! Steven said all he was missing was his finest sweet pants and a nap on the couch.

There was even a blind folded pie eating contest along with thanksgiving jokes & trivia:

There was so much food that we even got to bring some left overs home.

Although we didn’t have our family here, we had a great thanksgiving. And we hope you all had a great one too!