So here we are with the holidays fast approaching. I'm guessing lots of us expats will be heading back to our homes to celebrate Christmas in our more traditional ways. Truly, how exciting is it to be able to travel with the VTL lanes? Whoop! But what about the holidays coming up before such as Deepavali, Halloween and Thanksgiving?
I mean, what's Thanksgiving without a big crowd, right? When I first moved to Singapore, I really missed our traditional Thanksgiving with all our family and friends. So I pivoted. I invited all of our friends here in Singapore over for the big Turkey Day meal. And it was fun, too. We had friends from lots of cultures and all were excited to come."This is my first American Thanksgiving!" I mean, hey,Thanksgiving is kind of famous the world over, right? Who wouldn't want to experience an American or Canadian feast? So for many years, I've now celebrated Thanksgiving with my Singapore "family." Some people have moved. Some new people have joined. And it's always special.
Of course, when we first started cooking our feast, I had to be inventive. I couldn't find some of the ingredients I usually used so I punted. And you know what? Some of the recipes I found instead were actually better. People brought dishes that my own family would never have served and they were really yummy. Several are now on my menu every year. Celebrating in a new way brought our tradition to a whole new level and sharing it with other cultures enriched our lives in ways we couldn't have imagined before.
So here are again with another pivot. I don't think we'll be able to have a massive crowd this year, even if they loosen the Covid restrictions. I'll have to get inventive again.
I guess that's why I'm really excited about the Thanksgiving Tall Ship cruise the American Association of Singapore (AAS) is hosting the Thursday before Thanksgiving. If I can't have loads of folks to my house at least I can see my friends and share a meal together in a really cool venue. I've decided I'm going to pretend on the Mayflower sailing into port and give Thanksgiving a whole new spin in my head. Will it be my traditional way of doing things? Nope, not even sorry of, but it just might be better in some ways — certainly cooler.
Thanksgiving is all about being thankful. In these hard Covid times, you sometimes forget there is still a lot of things for which you can be thankful. But there are. There is always a silver living and always something good in the pivot. I'm thankful for this opportunity to do things a little differently this year.
Want to join me? Please do! Just click here to sign up for the Thanksgiving Sunset Cruise.