Alternative Thanksgiving

I haven't lived in the States for ten years now and during those ten years I have never made it back for Thanksgiving celebrations. I think primarily because it is to close to Christmas and in the UK Christmas is a huge holiday. For the past ten years, we have always tried to mark the holiday in some way. Before we had kids we would go out for a nice meal and talk about what we were thankful for in the past year. Once we had our eldest and we were more established in a family home (rather then the bachelor flat in London) I started to cook a proper Thanksgiving meal. Because it isn't a holiday in the UK and with working and the amount of time it takes to make Thanksgiving we always celebrated it on the following Saturday. We would have our neighbours around and they would all help be preparing a dish and we had a great time.

This year when October turned into November and thus our thoughts turned to Thanksgiving I didn't really know what we were going to do. Groceries here in Doha tend to be more expensive especially imported western brands. Plus I could only find frozen Turkeys and I am not a huge fan of frozen turkey. There was also a part me hoping that we would get invited to a Thanksgiving meal by one of the families in our Church, but that didn't happen ( I will save my thoughts on that subject for another time). We finally decided that since the two people we wanted to invite to Thanksgiving had already accepted invitations elsewhere that we would go for an Alternative Thanksgiving.

At the moment it is a big holiday here in Doha, Eid-al-Adha where the Muslim world is celebrating Ibrahim being willing to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to Allah. So my husband has 3 days off work and there is a general feeling of everything being in holiday mode, especially the roads as they are so quiet. We decided a week ago that we would spend the day at the beach and then on Wednesday my husband's Filipino colleagues invited us to a beach BBQ and camping over night on the beach.

We drove the 80kms to Durkan yesterday afternoon, it only takes between 45-60 minutes. We spent a couple of lovely hours on the beach sunning it, swimming and playing cricket. The beach was quiet, the water was cool and calm and the sand was pristine. The water was the clearest water I have ever seen and it was shallow for a long way out so the boys really enjoyed it.

We were joined by the Filipinos around 5:00 when we all set up our tents and the BBQ started. We proceeded to eat the most wonderful fresh king fish, chicken, other fish that I have no idea what it was and tons of rice. Everything was absolutely delicious and we tried everything, including fish head soup (in which you don't eat the fish heads, they are just used to flavour the liquid).

I am not sure I could have asked for a better Thanksgiving in the circumstances of living in a new country. We were surrounded by friends, enjoyed lots of really good food. Laughed and talked a lot. Slept under a beautiful clear sky in which I saw all the constellations I recognised but just in a slightly different position as I am a lot further south then I am used to being. I think the best part was enjoying something so new and different together as a family.