Celebrations

We celebrated Thanksgiving with five Americans, three Brits, a Canadian, and an Italian. Everyone brought their best Thanksgiving day dish and hence the food was amazing!! I think the addition of wine was instrumental as well. I had two classes that day so Zach had to make almost all of our food. He did an awesome job and the pear, blue cheese, walnut salad was the talk of the table, while the squash pie (in the absence of pumpkins) only slightly overshadowed by an apple-cranberry cobbler. The British contribution to our feast was really funny. Misunderstanding the nature of Thanksgiving (having heard about it mostly through Friends episodes), they brought frozen vegetable medley, hamburger buns, and paper plates, as well as over-enthusiasm for Allen Rickman and Xena Warrior Princess. 

What were Zach and I thankful for on Thursday? Receptive new friends and fellow ex-pats. 

Being the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we have two weeks of class left. On December 13th, Zach and I are flying to Spain! We'll be celebrating our three year anniversary a bit early with sunshine. We're then going to dip down into Morocco for our first visit to northern Africa. 

As far as literature goes this semester, I highly recommend Tsitsi Dangaremga's Nervous Conditions and as far as films, the Inuit-made and cast film Atanarjuat, on which I will be writing my master's thesis. I also met my first Bollywood film (if you don't count Fire) in the amazing Rang de Basanti. I foresee a guilty addiction to Bollywood in my future. 

Finally, Zach and I are trying to figure out how to avoid homelessness as of June 15th. We'll not yet be done with our dissertations, but will be able to write them from abroad. Should we stay here another year, work and travel and enjoy being non-professionals just once more? Should we pick a city we love and move there? Denver? Portland? Seattle? Phoenix? Boston? And what types of jobs should we look for? Alternate teaching licenses? Libraries? Administration? I think we need a fortune cookie this time around.