There are three firsts for me that occurred this Thanksgiving: it was my first Thanksgiving to be away from my family, my first Thanksgiving to be out of the country, and my first Thanksgiving to plan and cook all the food for the Thanksgiving feast! Our Thanksgiving here was different, but good. Our house was filled with fall-scented candles burning and our table was decorated perfectly for the holiday. We cooked all the same dishes for Thanksgiving- green bean casserole, dressing, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, etc. The biggest difference was the turkey- or the absence of the turkey. We had the opportunity to cook one ourselves but we only have one oven with ten other dishes to cook and a kitchen the size of a small bathroom. So we opted for chicken breasts which were great. Thanksgiving day we relaxed all morning and cooked and enjoyed the day. After eating, we all rolled over to the den and watched movies for the rest of the night. It was a great holiday. I do miss spending Thanksgiving with my real family, but spending it with my family here was the perfect alternative. It's hard to be thankful for what you have right before your eyes, so I'm thankful this year for not having what I've always had- comforts, family, traditions. I can now be truly thankful for those things.

We all know that as soon as Thanksgiving ends, the Christmas season begins. This means decorating our home, having parties, and baking Christmas goodies! I'm looking forward to this month! I'm a little sad sometimes to be away from the American celebration of Christmas, but incredibly thankful to finally step back from culture and celebrate why we started celebrating this holiday in the first place.

Things constantly break here- specifically, our dryer. It lives on our back porch, right outside my bedroom window, and has dried its last shirt this week. But we have another "broken" dryer that has been sitting on our porch for years I think. So now this broken dryer sits on top of the old one and every time we put clothes in it, we have to take about 3-4 strips of this heavy duty foam tape and tape it shut. It works so I'm not complaining- it's just funny. I feel like this is something freshman college guys would do.

In a room that I was in today for a few hours, out of nowhere, sparks started flying and booming sounds started resonating from the wall behind me. Just your usual electrical short on a rainy day. It continued for over an hour. Every red spark and boom forced me out of my seat and into my friend's lap. The Americans were the only ones moved by this extremely dangerous electrical hazard. Just more evidence of this country's low priority for safety.

Oh and as I type this, my glasses are taped together with white tape above the nose. They just snapped on me tonight. I'm so thankful that this country loves glasses and they are readily available in our city! Looks like I'm going spectacle shopping tomorrow.

It was ridiculously cold today. What makes this weather so unbearable is the moisture in the air. It's like every piece of clothing you put on and take off is wet, and cold, so pretty much it feels like you're wearing an ice pack most of the time. And there is no central heating in this country- only heating/cooling machines in some rooms of a house, depending on what you can afford. So we have heaters in our bedrooms and den, but they are turned off when we leave the room/house. Oh and our walls, ceiling and floors are made of cement and tile. So it just traps the cold. Ugh! I'm beginning to rethink my desire to live in a cold city in America one day. This year here will either break me or make me ready for it. We'll see.

Another thing about the culture- people just head for the hills when it gets the slightest bit cold or the slightest bit hot. More so in the cold than the hot. I went walking to the store today around 3 pm- there was not a soul on the street. Our normally bustling street was empty. Life shuts down here in the winter, and apparently it only gets worse. And it's the same for my roommates and I- instead of going to the gym today, we worked out to a 1990 Paula Abdul dance workout in our den. And the winter is the rainy season for this part of the country- so it rains nearly every day. It just keeps getting worse....if you're reading this and you live in America- please go outside today and just stand there for a minimum of one minute and just be silent and be thankful for what you have. I'd appreciate that!

Last weekend I ran my second half- marathon in a year! I have to say the first one in New Orleans last year was almost like a fun run compared to this one in Asia. I was so glad to be finished with training- I've loved being forced to run and stay healthy, but the burden of having to run 10 miles on a rainy Sunday night at 8 pm is not so fun. I traveled with my roommate and some other girls from around the country to a beautiful city that is near the coast. This city was incredible- it is known for its large lake which is supposed to be the most beautiful lake in the country. There were huge oak trees lining the streets and they hung over and covered the road surrounding the lake. There were so many Western-ish restaurants, cafes, and shopping - which we didn't get to experience a lot of, but it was enough to give me the fix I needed! Our run was on Sunday morning, so all day Saturday we walked around the lake, rented bicycles, toured the city, and took a boat/canoe ride out on the lake. That night, we sat on the rooftop of this nice restaurant which had gorgeous lanterns and lights everywhere and you could actually see the stars out- so exciting because I have seen maybe three stars since I've been here- our city is a smog hole. It made me miss American life, fine dining, enjoying a dinner and sitting around a table with a nice atmosphere and having good conversation. I cherish these few and far between blessings.

So Sunday morning we traveled down to this giant stadium ( not sure what goes on there still, but it was huge) and started preparing to run. I have never seen this many people in one place before. There had to be about 5,000-6,000 people there ready to run. Our race was a combination of a family run, a couple's run, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a marathon. My first half-marathon maybe had 400 runners. I was overwhelmed to say the least. As soon as the race began, people put their elbows out and started plowing through. There were no rules to this race. And no dress code either- Asian people do not usually run in running gear, unless they are pretty serious. Some ran in Converse sneakers, some in blue jeans, some in sweaters. I actually saw this guy limping across the finish line after running the half-marathon- he had Converse on- I think that will destroy his body permanently.

The run was a beautiful run, and it was a beautiful day - sunny and probably 75 degrees. But it started to rain, pretty heavily, for about 20 minutes in the middle of the run. Regardless, Lyndsey ( my roommate ) and I ran the whole thing without stopping- and made it in good time.

Since last weekend, I have not run one time. Maybe because I'm tired of running- or maybe because the weather has abruptly become winter this week. Our race was just in time before the cold weather hit! The temperature right now is colder than Alabama was at any point last winter. I'm realizing I didn't pack warm enough clothes, so I'm thinking of going shopping. The only problem is that everything is too small and too short for Americans. I guess I'm going to have to keep running to be able to buy some clothes over here!

Something I've noticed for a while and have become used to- the way raw meat is packaged here. Any time of the day, you will find people walking down the street with a sack of raw, fatty meat of some kind. It is not wrapped tightly by the butcher, on top of a nice styrofoam plate, but it is piled into a clear grocery sack that is thinner than tissue paper, and is tied at the top by someone's careless efforts to make a knot. I am sure that raw meat juice constantly drips from these bags. But people don't care here. They just stroll around with these sacks of solid white (not like white meat/dark meat but white fat) meats and just go on with their day like they were holding their purse in their hand! Bizarre- and gross.

The weather has begun to get cooler here. It is about 50-60 degrees- but you would think that it is below freezing by the way people here dress. It is like there is a memo written on everyone's calendar that says, "First Day to Wear Your Warmest Pieces of Clothing" and they put on every heavy coat and sweater they own and will not take them off until March. So it's obvious that they think I am crazy when I wear a short sleeved shirt in this weather. Girls will come up to me on the street and ask me if I'm cold. Really?

It has been a while since I last blogged- we traveled about a week ago for a national holiday and then getting back into our routine this past week has been a bit hectic. During the national holiday, a group of us decided to take a three day cruise down a famous river in the country. Let's just say I feel like I took a huge step in crossing cultures as a result of this experience. First of all, our cruise ship was nowhere near what an American cruise ship would be like. It did have more than one level- four or five actually. One of the most hilarious things about the beginning of the trip was that two of us, probably the girls, were going to have to be in the same tiny room as an old Asian couple. We got it worked out thankfully and all got to sleep together, but the fact that total strangers will sleep in the same tiny rooms together while practically living on top of each other for three days just blows my mind. The bunk rooms were tiny- four or six people stacked on top of each other with about 2 feet or less of aisle space in between the bunks and no other space to be found in the room. We did have a bathroom in our room - which was smaller than a hall closet and smelled so terrible that we made the call to keep it out of use for the duration of the trip because every time the door even opened, the stench would linger for an hour in the poorly ventilated room. The food on the ship wasn't served at any kind of interval- first of all it was not good at all and expensive- so we avoided eating on the ship and just threw together some pbj's and some street food if we ever found any.

We bought passes to the ship's "sun-deck" for the trip. The sun doesn't shine here, literally. So we should have known before we expected luxury, that it would less than perfect. But this outside area where we could actually breathe and move around was our saving grace. It was just an open space with plastic chairs and stools where we sat and watched the scenery roll by as the boat cruised.

We spent a lot of our time off of our boat- walking around temples or cruising on other boats that were more mobile. The scenery was gorgeous - the mountains were enormous and towered over the river on both sides. The weather was foggy and rainy, no surprise again, which was a shame but it added a very "native" feeling to the whole trip- typical Asia weather.

The people here love to take pictures- with only one person in each picture. It was a struggle at every stop and every beautiful scene to take pictures of our group or pictures of the scenery because they were going crazy with their solo shots. Just a cultural norm I'm learning.

There was some drama on our boat on the last night. An Asian lady was apparently deemed "crazy" by someone else on the boat and so the captain had asked her to leave. She had already purchased a ticket so she was refusing to get off the boat. Everyone on the boat was crowded around this lady who was sitting on her luggage with her arms crossed and they were all fighting and yelling and arguing. It was an event! After about two hours of arguing, I guess this lady either got off our boat or was allowed to stay on, because we finally left shore. The way the people here approach problems in public is so different. Everyone is in everyone's business and there is no privacy about a matter.

Overall, our trip was incredible. It was one of those trips we'll talk about forever. I loved traveling with people who are so laid back. I love that in the midst of these less than par accommodations, we were right at home and at ease. The high maintenance people who demand luxury in life miss out on some amazing things in this world- they can say they don't care, that they're satisfied with their nice couch and nice TV, but I doubt any of them would get to the end of their life and say they wish they'd spent more time in their house on their nice couch, and less time experiencing new adventures in this world. I'm thankful I never learned to expect luxury or to demand it. The experience is all about what you make of it. And we definitely made it great.

Living here is making me a blank slate. All the things that were once important and necessary to me are slowly being removed or altered.

Every time I connect with family back home, Alabama football is one of the main topics that we talk about. This has made me realize how SEC football has been the dominant factor of my fall schedule for 22 years. If you live in the Southeast, fall = football season, and if you're an Alabama football fan, you can't help but talk about the Tide in nearly every conversation during this time of the year. The environment supports this lifestyle. Here, there is no environment for SEC football. I watch the games at 3 am or 5 am on Sunday mornings, and if Alabama plays a great game and is victorious over a rival team, the game ends and I'm hit with the realization that I live in East Asia. If Alabama plays a terrible game and (possibly) loses to a rival team, the game ends and again, I'm hit with the realization that I live in East Asia. Without the environment of a "gameday", or the smell of an autumn breeze outside, or the faint (or loud) sound of hearing "Sweet Home Alabama" playing from someone's car, house, porch, or RV, it is hard to have the same excitement about football. I know it's just football, but it's our culture. I'm learning that part of living in another culture is having to leave some of your culture behind to gain some of theirs.

I'm also realizing how little time I spend here worrying about what I'm wearing, how my hair looks, etc- overall, my appearance is becoming even more invaluable to me. I'm still taking care of myself- I haven't let myself go to the point where I'm wearing oversized sweatsuits and baseball caps everyday. I just see how unimportant it is to spend so much money and time investing in these garments I put on my body. Once again, the environment does not support this lifestyle of value in appearance like America does. I could continue to dress in fashionable style everyday here, but what is the point? People here wear the same outfit everyday, which I may add is very trendy and stylish to my taste. If it doesn't matter so much to me here, why does it matter to me in America? If there is no point here, then why is there a point to it in America? My Asian friends see me as beautiful and worthy of their friendship regardless of how I look. And I think my American friends do too. I think the difference is my heart's motives behind what I put on and how I fix myself. Here, my heart is void of the need for approval and pride in my appearance. I can replace my "want" for pride in my appearance with the "want" to know people for the beautiful person they are beneath their skin. As I lose the importance of appearance, I can replace it with what matters- loving people.

SoI gain some and I lose some. Losing the excitement of football is a loss, but losing the importance of appearance and materialism is a gain.