For Halloween and Thanksgiving, the school put on bake sales as fundraisers for various departments. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking “oh, that’s a cute way to raise a bit of money!” Wrong. There is nothing cute about these bake sales. Nor is it a “bit” of money we’re talking about. These bake sales were OBSCENELY HUGE and incredibly profitable. The proceeds brought in from the sales of cupcakes, brownies, cookies, bars, cakes, muffins, hot dogs, and whatever else I’m forgetting are large enough to fully fund the scholarship for multiple students to attend this school, not an insignificant amount.
I’ll never again discredit bake sales as a waste of time…
Thanksgiving is a great holiday, especially if you have the
opportunity to spend it with family. If
that is not the case, however, we just have to find ways to make do. That’s what I ended up doing. Not just once, but three times this year.
First “Thanksgiving”: On Tuesday evening, the school hosted a
Thanksgiving dinner for the English department.
There were about fifty-five or sixty of us coming together for a “traditional”
Thanksgiving meal. Salads, cranberries,
rolls, stuffing (well, not in the traditional sense… minced meat would be a
better description. Minced meat of a questionable
source would be a good description), turkey, and pumpkin pie. Except, this isn’t your normal pumpkin
pie. It was straight out of the
pumpkin. Interesting, to say the
least. Regardless, it was fun to be
there, and the food tasted good!
Thanksgiving Day
Presentation: Every year, the
English department is asked to put together a 40-minute presentation to
celebrate Thanksgiving. This year, we
decided to tackle a pretty challenging program, including live music, filmed
interviews, a brief history, a visual presentation, and a bake sale). It’s amazing how much work goes into a
presentation like this, but in the end we had a pretty good final product.
A sample from the presentation. Yes, those are pics from SJU.
Thanksgiving Day
Dinner: It’s okay, though. We had a second Thanksgiving dinner that
night! Seven fellows got together to have
salad, potatoes, broccoli, turkey, gravy, and pecan and apple pies! Not only was it fun, but it was pretty
tasty! The only thing missing was the
pumpkin pie we have at home…
Yup, Thanksgiving wasn't too terrible.
Post-Thanksgiving Day
Dinner: I was lucky. My department head (a Boston native who’s
been teaching here for about 19-years) invited me over to her house for her
family’s/friends’ celebration. I rolled
in around 8:15 with a pumpkin pie (yes, the one I was missing the night
before!!) and left around five hours later, fully satisfied. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, quinoa
salad, mushroom and chestnut pie (SO GOOD!), cranberries, corn bread, pumpkin
pie, blueberry pie, and copious amounts of wine were on the menu! I met some fun Greeks, practiced a bit of my
Greek language skill (or non-skill), and completely forgot that it was the day
after Thanksgiving! I have to say, this
was probably one of my top five Thanksgiving celebrations! Looking forward to bringing some of those
recipes back home!
