Holidays in America

So this is way, way, way overdue! I'm gonna compile my 07 Thanksgiving and Christmas posts into one (when I really should be doing my paper!)

Thanksgiving was spent at my friend Dia's place in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. It's a pretty rural area, the kind of town where the entertainment is a visit to K-Mart or the diner. And that was what we did!

Dia's cute house.

One of her three cats. Reminded me of Baileys, of course.

The view of the forest from the backyard.

It was a nice, low-key few days. I had a sorta traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with turkey and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and a whole assortment of pies, including apple, lemon and pecan. Like I said, the town is pretty rural, so what kids do for entertainment is mostly hang around in other kids' houses, or drive around. So, that was my first Thanksgiving experience.
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Christmas eve 2007 was spend at another friend Matt's place in Greenwich Village. His grandfather owns this brownstone place, which is really cool. It's four storeys high, but narrow, and is very old and quaint, with very narrow and steep stairs. A lot of character. Anyway, Matt has an annual family Christmas gathering on the eve, and it was quite a crowd of adults and kids.

His whole family is very artistic. His mum teaches art; he plays the cello; his uncle is a successful cellist and other relatives play violins,etc. So, the whole affair was very musical. One of their traditions is for everyone to gather, share hymm books and sing hymms, with musical accompaniment from his uncle and aunt (I think) who played the violin and the piano. I didn't know the tune to half the songs, so I just tried to keep up as much as I could.

Then, later in the night, they decided to hold an impromptu concert with a strings sextet. The sextet spanned young and old, with Matt on the cello and his young cousin on the violin, and his aunts and uncles on violins and violas. They played (classical stuff which I obviously have no knowledge of) for about 30-45 min while the rest of us just chilled.

That's the impromptu concert caught in action. Matt is on the cello in the back, and the little kid on the violin is Frankie, his British cousin and Liverpool fan.

The thing that was atypical of their celebration was that they opened gifts on Xmas eve. All the presents, wrapped simply with newspaper and marked with names, were stuffed under their tree, seen on the right of the pic. I got one too! Lol, Matt's mum gave me a set of Converse ankle socks. I ended the night playing Blackjack with his cousins.

So, that was my American holiday experience of 07. CNY to come~