Happy Thanksgiving

Hello everyone. We hope that everybody had a great Thanksgiving holiday, complete with tons of food and time to reflect on all our blessings. Here in Shanghai Thanksgiving is pretty much a non-event. It was a regular school day for Kate and Emily and my office was open like normal. This is when you realize that this a strictly an American holiday. Still, we've done our best to make this Thanksgiving as "normal" as possible. School was closed Friday and I burned some vacation time so we can have a long weekend together.

Some of our friends here really made an effort to make this a normal holiday, even going so far as to cook a traditional dinner. We, on the other hand, chose to take the easy way, joining some friends for dinner at Cafe du Monde. The original Cafe du Monde is in New Orleans and is supposed to be pretty famous from what I hear. The one here in Shanghai is a Chinese version of the original but maintains the whole cajun/creole/jazz atmosphere. No one here has been able to figure out if the Shanghai store is affiliated with the original or if it's just a knock-off, like many things are in China. We've even tried to get the owner, who is Chinese-American, to talk about it but he avoids the subject. However, he does claim to have been a manager of one of the restaurants in New Orleans.

Regardless if it's the real-deal or a copy, the food is good, service is friendly, and you always have a good time. Thanksgiving evening was no exception. Seating this night was by reservation only and the regular menu was replaced with turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and all the good stuff. We all still missed our families back in the States but we made the best of it and enjoyed each other's company. I wanted to get a couple of pictures to post here but the camera batteries were completely dead.