American Thanksgiving

A couple of weekends ago I had my second Thanksgiving of the year. I spent the American holiday with Dawn (a friend from church) and her family. I told her it would be my first ever white people Thanksgiving. Little did I know that white people are the minority in her family! The story is that her parents adopted a bunch of kids, all of whom are ethnic minorities (Korean, African American, Hispanic). Out of 12 kids in the family only 4 are biological. Several years ago Dawn's dad passed away and her mom ended up remarrying a man who also adopted a bunch of kids. Altogether there are 22 kids in the family now! Absolute insanity. But such amazing people. Anyway, it was a fun day...I ate way too much, but that's expected.

The next day I went to the Detroit Institute of Arts for its grand re-opening. Free admission :) My goal is to go to all the museums in the area for free before I graduate. I've already hit up 4 of them on various free admission days, but at least one of them I have to revisit at some point b/c I didn't really get to see everything I wanted to see. Grad school has made me so stingy (let's say...frugal) it's not funny. Not having any income whatsoever after 7 years of holding down multiple part-time and full-time jobs simultaneously will do that to you.

Saturday morning my family came to visit. We went outlet shopping, of course, but we were disappointed that we didn't find any major deals. After Birch Run we went to Chicago Uno Bar and Grill, which is becoming a bit of a tradition now. We always go there for steak after a day of shopping. The next day, after some more shopping, I finally got to take my family to Citadel. The past several times they've come to visit they weren't able to stick around for the service, which is in the afternoon. This time they stayed and I think overall they at least thought it was interesting, but then I didn't feel like the service was representative of Citadel. My parents were also really shocked at the testimonies of youth in the church who had just come back from a purity retreat. A bunch of them stood at the front of the sanctuary and said stuff like "I learned that masturbation is a sin...not that I do it" (haha!) and "After this retreat I've decided not to have sex anymore until I get married" (nearly causing the girl's grandma to have a heart attack at the news that the girl had been having sex at all).

Christmas is three weeks tomorrow! Definitely putting up the tree as soon as I get home. I don't care that it will only get put up a couple of days before the 25th or that it'll probably be ugly since there is no rhyme nor reason to our random collection of decorations. The past three years we've been away during the holidays, but this year we're home and we are having Christmas.