We, the Dickinson kids and Irina, celebrated Thanksgiving the day after Thanksgiving at Starlite Diner, an old-fashioned, American-style diner in Moscow. We drank milkshakes, ate burgers, and talked about our Thanksgiving traditions and what we were thankful for. It was cozy, silly, and friendly to be surrounded by American coke ads and photos of American classic movie stars.
1. Austen, with his signature "this burger is really big" smile. I force this same photo upon Austen every time he has a huge plate of food. I'm a nice friend.
2. Irina, after Maureen's demonstration of how to draw a turkey by tracing your hand.
On the actual day of Thanksgiving, I went by myself to a play, "Любовь и голуби" ("Love and Doves" or "Love and Pigeons" - I'm not really sure what the best translation would be). My host mom is friends with lots of artists and actors in Moscow. For her birthday last week, an actor friend of hers came over for dinner and, after Tatyana expressed my love of theater, he called the next day to inform her that he had reserved two tickets for me to his play on Thursday night. She kept telling me it was in Таганский Театр, but I looked it up and there is no Таганский, there's only Театр на Таганке. Anyways, after some anxiety and lots of help from Irina, we found out the play would be in Дом Высоцкого на Таганке. Due to unfortunate circumstances, that were probably my own fault, I didn't have anyone to go with to the theater. I found the building all by myself, which I think is pretty impressive because it was off a side street and then down a dark alley. Then, I went to the ticket table and spoke in Russian and told them the actor's name, and it was so exciting and scary and I'm so proud of myself!! You have to understand that speaking to strangers, or even just speaking to people in general, and walking into unknown situations can be really nerve-wraking for me. So, this was a big deal!
On Saturday, Maureen and I met with my friends, Katya and Lena, to cook Thanksgiving dinner together! They'd been planning on celebrating Thanksgiving since I first met them, in September. That's when they invited me to cook Thanksgiving dinner with them, actually. September. They were very committed and even bought a full turkey, which is expensive and hard to find in Moscow. They looked to Maureen and I to prepare the turkey, since we were the Americans. This was unfortunate because neither of us had ever cooked a turkey before, and meat grosses me out. I embraced the day though. I even patted some butter onto the meaty uncooked flesh with my BARE HANDS, before popping him into the oven. After some debate, Maureen and I settled on chopped apples, carrots, onions, and celery to stuff up the turkey. Maureen did a lot of that part; I halfheartedly threw vegetables in the turkey's general direction. We truely had no idea what we were doing. It was difficult to explain to the Russians that we also wanted to prepare stuffing as a side dish, separate from the turkey. They were very skeptical but, eventually allowed us to do so, after shrugs and mutterings of "oh well, it is YOUR holiday". Amazingly, everything turned out to be really delicious and actually kind-of-easy to prepare. I wasn't planning on eating the turkey, because I was convinced we wouldn't cook it long enough or at a high enough temperature and, as a result, I would get salmonella and die. But, after hours of chatting, cooking, and Christmas music, I forgot my worries and ate it anyways. That turkey was really good. I genuinely don't understand how it's possible. This was a true Thanksgiving miracle, my friends. Maureen and I only seasoned the meat with butter, salt, and pepper. I don't even know how.... I just... I'm still in awe.
After dinner, the Russians wanted to make pumpkin pie. They slammed a giant pumpkin onto the table, and then asked us what to do.. It was kind of humiliating to say, "yeah, uh, we usually just go to the store and, uh, buy canned pumpkin.. so........." However, just like the turkey, this pie was also amazing. We ate it warm, right out of the oven, which isn't the way to eat pumpkin pie. BUT IT WAS SO GOOD. It was like chocolate mousse, but warmed, and with pumpkin instead of chocolate. So... it wasn't like chocolate mousse at all. I whispered to Maureen that eating this pie felt like eating smiles.
After pie and lots of sitting, the other Katya (there were two Katya's there), set up a hookah on the floor and then surfed youtube for Russian cartoons with English subtitles. Then, after Lena and Katya (the other Katya), hurriedly shoved their boots on and ran to the corner store for vodka, Gleb (Katya's boyfriend), Katya, Maureen, and I found a series of cat videos. They were narrated in English by a British guy, with English subtitles underneath. I started reading along with the narrator in my best British accent. I was pretty good at it.. So good, in fact, that Gleb muted the sound so it was only my voice narrating the video. After a while, I realized it was 12:30 AM and I needed to make it home before the metro closed. I cut it very close, catching the last metro train. It was an all-around successful 12 hours of cooking, eating, anxiety of not understanding what my Russian friends were saying, nervous laughter, genuine laughter, singing, and learning.
^^^ Gleb preparing for his stunning imitation of Chewbacca from Star Wars.