Congratulations for Thanksgiving!

"Congratulations!" It's really a funny word here, and WAY overused. I'm not sure if something went wrong back in the day with the translation from Russian to English, or if it's a literal translation of something that's said in Russian, but so far this month, here's the congratulations I've recieved:

Congratulations on the first snow, Miss DeVries!

Congratulations on wearing boots for the first time!

Congratulations on your cheese! (I finally found a cheese I like!)

Congratulations on our terrible weather!

Congratulations on your fast Russian learning!

and most recently:

CONGRATULATIONS ON THIS THANKSGIVING CELEBRATION!

Really, It's funny, and I love it. Everything is positive here. EVERYTHING.

So, I made Thanksgiving dinner today. We'll be 1,000 miles north in Karaganda for the actual American Thanksgiving, so we figured we'd do it this weekend with out students. And they LOVED it! We made a traditional Thanksgiving meal, and made EVERY single element of it from scratch. It was a such a rush.

Menu: Chicken (no turkey here, unfortunately), stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mac-n-cheese, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, peach cobbler, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie (seriously, I made it from scratch from a PUMPKIN! who knew that was possible?!), and apple pie. IT WAS A SUCCESS. We have one class that's all high school girls, and they came early and helped us cook. It was a good time, we talked about what we were TRULY thankful for, and we talked about the REAL reason that we moved to Kazakhstan. It was a wonderful time with out students. Please, join us in continuing to lift our students before the One who saves. Here's some pictures of our AWESOME meal:

(below: my INCREDIBLE pumpkin pie, made from real pumpkins. Go ahead, tell me how domestic I am.)

(the main meal spread: chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, stuffing, mac-and-cheese.)

(my girls!)

(and finally, below is the first pie I've ever made. It's a banana cream pie. I heard it was good, my kiddos liked it. I didn't try it. I hate pie.)