Happy Thanksgiving to my friends and family!
It’s definately strange to be in another country for the holidays! A year ago I never would have imagined that I would be celebrating Thanksgiving in Thailand! I wanted to share some of the details of how the ladies of team Habibi spent Thanksgiving 🙂
We started out by sleeping in! What a wonderful feeling that was 🙂 For lunch, we had decided the week before that we wanted to try and have green chile enchiladas! The task for this week was to find all the right ingrediants…in Thailand. Items needed: corn tortillas, green chile, garlic, chicken, cheese, oinon, and cream of chicken soup. I knew the vegetables and chicken would all be easy. The other ingrediants…not so much. Shredded cheddar cheese is expensive in Thailand! A small bag cost about 300 baht. That converts to about $10…that’s a lot of money for a small bag of cheese. Especially since our entire food budget for the day is only $20! So, we settled on 6 slices of what is probably processed cheese 🙂 I managed to find about 2 cans of Campbells cream of chicken soup and 2 cans of some random brand I have never heard of! I searched all over the Tesco Lotus (Thai walmart/target type store) for tortillas…or anything that resembled tortillas. No such luck. We soon learned that our wonderful American contacts for the month had 2 packages of corn tortillas in their freezer!! I have no idea where they got them. They turned out great! I roasted the peppers in a wok and also fried the tortillas in a wok. There are pictures below of the yummy goodness 🙂
While eating our enchiladas, we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving! Then we put on some Christmas music and played a rousing game of Monopoly 🙂 We didn’t have time to finish so the game is on hold. I’m pretty much one turn away from going bankrupt 🙁
Then it was off to Patong for another meal. This one was a little different though. Our contacts took us to a place called the BBQ Hut. They are known for their Mexican and Thai food. Tonight they were having a Thanksgiving buffet! On the menu: turkey, dressing, ribs, chili, tacos, pad thai, sticky rice and mango, chicken carbonara pasta, sweet potatoe pie w/whipped cream, shrimp, and a few other items I can’t remember. The pork…the picture below will have to just speak for itself!
Then we finished up the evening by going back out to the red light district to hand out vidoes and literature to the prostitutes and those on the street. It was a rather productive evening and I praise God for the opportunity to be here. We are all so blessed to live in America. It took leaving everything I knew and flying half way around the world to realize everything I had! Thank you God for me life and thank you for the opportunity and honor to share your name in some of the darkest places on earth.
Here are a few things I miss from home…and seem to be even more thankful for them now that I don’t have them 🙂
My bed
blowdryer
pedicures
cool weather
air conditioner…at best we usually only have a small oscilating fan
warm sugar cookies
the right to worship God anytime or anywhere
a western toilet…not a squatty potty!
a shower that isn’t attached to wall directly next to the toilet. (it’s a pain to remember to remove the toilet paper from the room or it will get soaked by the shower!)
a dryer…my clothes are always stretched out!
Things I’m thankful to have on the World Race 🙂
Friends that I can call my family
this month….a shower, western toilet, and a washer!!
wonderful friends and family back home to pray and support me!
a regular-sized pillow! so glad I didn’t bring a travel one 🙂
just enough clothes that I can carry on my back.
I’m sure there are many more things that I could add to this list.
Mostly I’m thankful to my supporters. Without each and everyone of you…I would not be here today! To everyone who may have said a simple prayer to those of you who may have only sent in $1…THANK YOU! It was more of a blessing than you will ever know! To those who have done more than that…I also THANK YOU! None of you may ever know the impact YOU have made simply because you chose to be one of my supporters! Some of you I have never met…some I have known my whole life. I love you all!!!
Many blessings on this Day of Thanks here in Thailand!
-Michelle
