Turkey day was an interesting experience here in Kaz. It had all the classic makings of a typical American thanksgiving. There was good food, friends, family, drinking, and weird sports on television. We celebrated during the weekend because most of us teach and thanksgiving obviously isn’t a national holiday here. On Friday Meghan, Ehren, and myself headed to Koilyk to help Margaret with the preparations. We went to Margaret’s neighbor’s house to kill the turkeys. Her neighbor is amazing and saved the two biggest turkeys for us…she wouldn’t let her husband kill them this past summer when he wanted to because they were being saved for “the American’s holiday of thanks”. Luckily since there were no male volunteers present we didn’t have to kill the birds ourselves. We did have to watch them have their throats slit and carry them home. If you want to see a picture of me carrying a dead turkey back to Margaret’s house check out my flickr site. So then we headed back to Margaret’s where we had some locals over and played Ehren’s favorite game, boxhead. I welcomed the vodka this time because I was in quite a bit of pain. I had a brutal cough for like a month and just before thanksgiving I must have pulled a muscle near my rib cage because every time I took a breath it felt like someone was stabbing me. The next day we all got up early and started cooking…well everyone except Adam who we kept sending out to get things from the store that we forgot. We made stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed corn and peas, gravy, and of course we cooked one of the turkeys in the traditional thanksgiving style. The other turkey was cooked on top of the pechka by Margaret’s host mom, Tamara, who was also nice enough to clean the turkeys for us…an act that I will never willingly do. We also had homemade pumpkin pie and carrot cake which Tamara and Margaret made before we arrived. After the cooking festivities we got ready for our guests to arrive. We all washed our hair in the sink…which required help since Margaret also doesn’t have running water. Everyone else arrived and Madge’s local friends came over and we got down to some serious eating and drinking. After we all achieved our turkey comas we flipped on the televison…we knew not to expect and football but we did get to watch this crazy Russian sport game show that involves insane tasks and live bulls. Overall it was a great first holiday in Kaz…wait I was here for Halloween too right? Oh well that doesn’t really count as a big family holiday.