American Thanksgiving in the Middle East

It's happening.  We have been here just long enough that we are starting to get homesick.  So thankful to have my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Thom not too far so that we could spend Thanksgiving with them.

 We took the short hour flight to Bahrain on Thanksgiving night (my first Thanksgiving in 27 years that I had to work AND go to school!) and celebrated the holiday of giving thanks, eating food, watching football and being with friends and family on Friday.
Speaking of friends, our friend, Nailah, went with us to Bahrain.  We teach at the same school and live on the same floor in our apartment building.  She's fabulous and I'm so glad she came!

Sweet Molly. She's really good at laying around. :)

My aunt and uncle are such great hosts.  Since living overseas, they've always had big Thanksgivings and invite all their friends.  This year they hosted about 35 people!  Needless to say, we stayed up late the night before cooking desserts and making sure we had all the ingredients for the tons of casseroles we planned to make (yum!). Thanksgiving morning was spent watching the Macy's Day Parade (old tradition) and then sitting by the pool (Think it should be my new tradition!).

We did get to see a little bit of Bahrain before we headed back to Dubai.  A few things I learned about Bahrain:

1. It's an island

2. They have protests there due to differences between Muslims (Suggested read: After the Prophet by Lesley Hazelton)

3. Bahrain is connected to Saudi Arabia by a causeway.  Many people live in Bahrain and work is Saudi (like my uncle!)

4. Sometimes you try to go to something (like a museum telling the history of a fort) and it is closed because of a holiday you didn't know about (so I can't really tell you anything about the fort in the pics below!). :)

Missed the rest of my family this Thanksgiving, but even so, many things to be thankful for this year (including Skype which let me talk to most of them)!