Our first Thanksgiving

This has been stuck in my Draft for so long. Glad I made time to finish it. Pesky ADD. (hehe!)


I never thought that Thanksgiving is such a huge holiday event in the United States. At first I feel awkward greeting everyone here a "Happy Thanksgiving" and thought that the event was solely for Americans but no. It's actually for all immigrants. Recalling the documented film we've watched at Jamestown, the first Thanksgiving took place in Virginia as early as 1607. It's the English settler's way of thanking the Lord for the bountiful crops they harvest for food. But Plymouth colony a dozen of years ago says that English pilgrims landed in historical city of Massachussets to teach Wampanoags, a large group of native American Indians, to hunt, fish, and harvest in exchange for a land where they can live. In return, the native American Indians brought them turkey as a sign of their sincere gratitude. That was nice. So much for the history.


It's a rough 1-hour and 45-minute drive to Uncle Resty and Auntie Elsie's place in San Diego. Since it's a dinner gathering, we decided to do something else in the morning before we go to their place. A side-trip to San Diego Zoo was not a bad idea at all. It's pretty far but at least we enjoyed the scenery. You know how happy we are going around to so many places and explore. Long travels thrill us. I was never like this before. My influential hubee just made me this way. Gee, I am now a traveller.






After two hours and a half we arrived to our destination. Thanks to Google maps. We may need to have our own navigator soon so we won't get lost more often but I think that would take some time as we just moved here. This coming month we're anticipating more junk mails and bills to pay in our mail box. You guessed it right. That's the not so good part of being employed.



The zoo has just opened when we arrived. As we entered the park, we saw the pink flaminggos taking a dip in the water. They're all so pretty! We rode the tram and saw the bird's eye view of the whole zoo. San Diego Zoo is big. I don't know if that's the biggest zoo in Socal. They're expanding too. We saw the huge space they're working on for the elephants' new home.







After we got out of the tram we walked towards the trail of chimpanzees. They were awesome. The gorillas are really big but lovable.





The pandas look nice. I didn't know they live in a quiet place. They're probbaly not really fond of noise. The other one reminded me of Sampson, the Samoyed of Daphne in Virginia. It sleeps with its feet up. I just loved to imagine I'm hugging them both.

The next trail we passed by was the bird sanctuary. We saw the enormous eagles they have but we didn't go through because we have them in the Philippines. Some of them are even much bigger than what they have there.

It was getting hot but the blow of the wind was cold. After touring half part of the zoo we took the bus express that goes around the other side of the zoo. We were surprised to see animals only found in our country. And seeing them feels like "Wow, they are really from the Philippines and they understand me." (haha - kidding!)

Then we saw the elephants and practically, they are the biggest animals on earth. I just learned that we can tell if the the elephant came from Asia or Africa by their ears. If the ears are big and flappy, they are African elephants. If the ears are smaller then they are Asian elephants. So I guess Dumbo originated from Africa.

We left the zoo at 3pm. I can say that San Diego Zoo is really far. Did I just say it's freakin' far? (Uh-oh ADD strikes again) It took us another 40 minutes to reach Uncle Resty's house. Thank God we easily found the place on time.

Auntie Elsie's family were all so nice. They had lots of Filipino food on the table. I visualized it as a long Olympic swimming pool teasing me to dive. That's me when I get so hungry. They also had turkey that looked like a giant chicken to me. It was my first time to taste turkey and I love it. It tasted like chicken but drier. Perfect with gravy.

Before we left, they packed us some food to bring home. Now that's really Filipino. I just loved the munggo with langka dessert made by Auntie Eva. I got to have that recipe. It was very Filipino. Oh I miss home so much.

So Thanksgiving's over and few more days left before Christmas. I'm beginning to think I'm liking the US. But Christmas in the Philippines is still the best place you want to be. It's true. There's no place like home (minus the political brouhaha) >:)