Plans to have the Internet at home were foiled once
again. Now the expected date is Monday. I was hoping to be able to Skype with
my family for the holiday but I will have to settle for a phone call instead.
I obviously know Thanksgiving is an American-only holiday
but I guess I didn’t realize how different it would feel being here instead of
back home. Even leading up to today, there were no turkey sales or cranberry
sauce displays, no cartoon turkeys hung around the grocery stores. It’s just
another day.
Last Thanksgiving we were newly-engaged and our moms were
meeting for the first time in Florida. His mom flew down from Minnesota and my
mom picked her up at the airport a day before we arrived. They got along like old friends and we were
all very happy to be spending the holiday together. It was very relaxing
sitting on the back porch sipping wine, sharing stories, and becoming a family.
We certainly didn’t know then that we would be so far apart during the next
Thanksgiving.
Any other year, delightful aromas emanating from the
kitchen would cause me to wake up and begin the countdown to lunchtime. This
year my husband went to work and I am meeting him for lunch. Then I will return
home to begin cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time on my own. I never
imagined I would be undertaking this without guidance from my mom. I’m also
missing the noise and laughter from my brother and sister and the occasional
drop-ins from extended family members throughout the day.
Of course, making Thanksgiving dinner in Germany is
accompanied by other unique challenges. The ovens here are very small compared
to the ones in America. My roaster won’t even fit into the oven completely
unless I turn it at an angle. Because of this, we are just having a small
turkey this year and I guess that makes sense anyway since there are only two
of us.
Since we’re on the topic of kitchen appliances, I
promised to tell you about my first time using the dishwasher. I used Google
Translate in order to read the settings. The rough translations are: Normal
with Fast Forward, Normal without Fast Forward, Fast Program, and Short Coils.
Coils?
Trying my best to understand, I decided to go with Normal
without Fast Forward. Each of the settings is accompanied by a letter (Normal
with Fast Forward- A; Normal without Fast Forward- B; and so on). I turned the
dial to ‘B’ and pressed the power button. Nothing happened. I cranked the dial
all the way around and back to ‘B’ and pressed the button once more. Again,
nothing happened. I made sure the door was entirely closed and tried the button
one more time. This resulted in silence. I called my husband into the kitchen
for reinforcement.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.”
I went through the whole process, this time with my husband supervising. He
agreed that it seemed like I was doing what makes sense.
He proceeded to open and close the door a few more times,
applying different amounts of force each time and ending every try with a press
of the button. We were perplexed.
Frustrated, I exclaimed, “Great! I’m just going to have
to call Arndt again and when he comes over he’s going to stand here in the
kitchen and stare at the dishwasher with me, just like we did with the washing
machine last week. Why can’t this just be easy?!”
With that last desperate question, I shoved the door
closed, pressed the button, and the dishwasher miraculously lurched to life!
We turned to each other, shrugged, and then left the
kitchen. All of the dishes came out clean and spotless. Perhaps the trick is getting
angry, yelling, and punching the door. I guess I’ll find out later today when I
wash the dishes from Thanksgiving dinner.
I hope your Thanksgiving
is happy and wonderful, filled with football and family and lots of great food.
Today (and every day) I am thankful that we can still
communicate despite the distance separating us. Happy Thanksgiving!
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