Celebrating Thanksgiving in a foreign country...felt kind of odd, but it was a lot of fun. We had this potluck where we all brought a dish of some sort, but since I can't cook I provided the rolls, butter, soda, and assisted with the desert. While we were making baked apples (recipe courtesy of jailbird Martha Stewart) the fire alarm went off and the entire dorm had to evacuate. During the incident I was thinking, oh God, been there, done that (sophomore year at GW) but it turned out that the dorm administration had decided to do a fire drill (yeah, great timing to do a fire drill...while a bunch of Americans were slaving away in their kitchens...on second thought, maybe the Brits did it on purpose). When it came time for dinner, there was plenty of food for the 12 of us (and ironically, there were only a few Americans, so we had to do a bit of explaining about the Mayflower, Pilgrims and Indians, yada, yada). We had an 18 pound turkey, which, according to the people in charge of cooking the turkey, was quite hard to find...they had to call around to a bunch of supermarkets, and when they finally found one it was a whopping 18lb. Of course, we had all the regular sides: stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, and vegetable curry (ha, traditional Thanksgiving dish...the curry was quite good with the turkey...might have to use that in the future instead of gravy). We had some various desserts, ice cream, and wine...lots of wine. Finally got home at 2am...good times.

So Friday was the biggest shopping day of the year back in the US. Lame. Ironically, that day I came across this billboard in my neighborhood, which pretty much sums up my thoughts on "Black Friday." The text of the billboard, which you can't see due to the glare, says "Who really does a 'spot' of shopping anyway?"

Agreed.