Happy Thanksgiving! (and I land on somebody during the basketball tournament)

It's been busy during school and after school! I start tutoring next week, but the focus yesterday was baking for Thanksgiving. I made an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, a pumpkin-cream cheese roll, blueberry-rhubarb-cranberry tarts, sausage gravy, and acorn squash! It was quite a day of baking, and I'm thinking about starting a workout video titled "Cooking without a blender: How to get ripped in 3 months (the lighting makes me look kinda buff I guess--Wooh!)."



Seriously though, making that whipped cream with a whisk took a long time! We had Thanksgiving dinner at the swanky penthouse apartment of Linda the principal (she lives above the school, http://lindaskk.blogspot.com/ is her blog).



Rob the roomate carved up the turkey. Delicous!



I provided the role of the butler...I guess. It was just interesting "dressing up" for a social occasion in my nicer clothes that weren't my shirt and tie for school. Another teacher wore her "heelys" and she said it was the first time she had worn heels in 3 months. I guess that's one of those luxuries you have to go without in a bush village (I miss my turntables and vinyl more than any other physical kinda thing).



Oh yes, and I did land on an older gentleman during the basketball tournament. Every year Shaktoolik has a big basketball tournament around Thanksgiving, where people from all of the surrounding villages come and try to defeat the reigning champs here. Leonard, a local, asked me to play for his team. I told him multiple times that I hadn't played a real game of basketball since the 3rd grade, but he insisted that I play, so I joined up!




So how did I crush an old man, you ask? Well, our first match was against the "old guys" of Shaktoolik, a team of 40-50 year old men. These guys could really shoot well, even if I could scramble around them on the court. Anyways, at one point I got a little over-zealous as Binga, an older guy from around here, was going for an easy lay-up. People in the crowd said I jumped with a classic Michael Jordan, legs sprawled, arm in the air, "Enforcer" leap from the 3 point line to shut this guy down, but I mis-timed my jump and I ended up landing on his head! It was a very emabarassing scene. I helped him up and we were both okay, but the entire crowd was stunned, yet laughing hysterically. I gave Binga a nice pie today as an apology, so I think everything is okay. He said that he was a little sore from my landing on him yesterday...they won the game, but I'm just glad nobody got hurt. I AM NOT A BASKETBALL PLAYER.