I suppose Thanksgiving would be an important place to start right?! I have had quite a few Thanksgivings away from home, but never have I cooked for a Thanksgiving or hosted a Thanksgiving, especially not one for 22 people. Yes, I said 22 people... and let us take into account that these are not normal people. The majority of them are mutant, super-human, freak basketball players that can eat double the normal amount without even chewing. Clearly I am not dumb enough to volunteer myself as the hostess and organizer, so we can blame Mr. Damon Huffman for offering up my services. How thoughtful of him! This adventure story begins with the planning, and I would like to point out that this whole process becomes a little more challenging as a result of the fact that Thanksgiving is only an American holiday and so many of the products that are used to carry out this yearly tradition can only be found in the U.S. On top of that I'm pretty sure that the Belgian people think we are dumb for having this holiday, probably because I think everyone except Americans recognize that it is generally a celebration of how the founders of America were total dicks and murdered massive numbers of the Native American population and stole their land. Belgians also seem to have holidays every week and I'm pretty sure every single one revolves around drinking and eating so Thanksgiving doesn't even create a tiny blip on their radar. Let's start with the challenge of finding a turkey. It isn't as easy as you would think, mainly because it isn't a common thing to just have a whole turkey in a store for people to buy and eat on an ordinary Monday or Tuesday night. So it comes down to this, you can find a farm that has turkeys, you can go watch the turkeys do turkey things and then you can pick out the one that you want to have slaughtered for your dinner. Interesting to say the least. Orrrrr you can get really lucky and acquire access to the U.S. military base and then go shopping in an American store, which leads to my next "first".
I went onto a military base for the first time. I was lucky enough to have a wonderful friend who has access to the base and who offered to let me tag along and participate in some Thanksgiving shopping! I would compare it to going to somewhere like China town or Little Italy when you are in the U.S., but instead I was visiting "Little America". Even the cars that people drive and purchase on the base are American. They have pretty much everything you could want including exercise equipment, and of course Burger King because what would Americans do without fast food?! All of these things are really neat, but the most important part of the base is the American grocery store. When you have been attempting to navigate Belgian stores for months and trying to read labels in Dutch, I can't even explain what it feels like to see Hamburger Helper and Bisquick on the shelves. I don't even eat those things even when I'm in the States, but all of a sudden I felt the urge to buy absurd things like jumbo bottles of ranch dressing, maple syrup, instant mashed potatoes, easy-mac, and a plethora of other crap (Don't worry, I refrained). I didn't fully realize how serious America's obsession with convenience was (translate as America's laziness) until I spent a few months in European stores. Everything is super sized compared to how you would find things in a Belgian store and it just reminded me of how wasteful and over the top Americans can be. Dear USA, you still have a lot of shit to figure out compared to other parts of the world, and when you are done working on not being obese and wasteful, I could use some health insurance and some help with my god damn student loans that are equivalent to an f-ing mortgage. Thanks. Moving on, I also had horrendous house-wife moment where I proceeded to get ridiculously excited about buying fabric softener, at which point I had to take a time-out and question what the hell I'm doing with my life. Once I finished dealing with that crisis, I was able to focus on how amazing it was to shop with U.S. dollars again and not have to pay for things in Euros. Not only was it cheap but it was tax free! Woohoo!
Once I had acquired all of my goodies and multiple turkeys, the next step was to actually organize and cook. Clearly I wasn't going to cook the turkeys at my house, because I doubt that you could even fit a pigeon into the Easy Bake oven, let alone a giant flightless gobbler... (I also had a minor oven fiasco the day before Thanksgiving that may or may not have involved me fully lighting it on fire, which is only another strike against my Easy Bake confidence). But we shant dwell on that magical moment in my culinary adventures. I successfully baked my first apple pie without the assistance of the "Baroness of Baking," aka my mother. I made my pie crust from scratch, and not only I am quite pleased with myself, but I am certain that the Baroness would have been fucking thrilled as well. I must say that making two pies, two cakes, mac and cheese from scratch, and impromptu gravy was no small feat for one day especially considering only one thing can fit at a time into my godforsaken oven from hell. However, Thanksgiving turned out to be a success and a shit load of fun with all 22 of our guests!
Another "first" would be that I participated in my first volleyball game! Well, technically it didn't count because my volleyball license hasn't gone through yet and so I was playing illegally, but it was lots of fun and I'm looking forward to playing for the rest of the season. This is probably not exciting for you guys to read about so I'll move on to something slighly more interesting... like how this is the first time I've dated a criminal.
Damon Huffman commited a felony without telling anyone and I was lucky enough to be the one at home when the police came knocking on the door. The story goes as follows: Damon leaves the house to rush off to his basketball game but forgets his ID. He comes back to the house and jumps out of the car to run inside, leaving the car outside without the parking break on. Our egg shaped vehical then rolls ten feet into the passenger door of our neighbors piece of crap audi, leaving a giant dent. Clearly the thing to do in this situation is for him to get into his car and drive off without leaving a note, or telling anyone, all on account of the fact that if he is late for his game the team fines him. He has now created a hit-and-run situation despite the fact that he wasn't even in the car when the accident occured. This is Damon Huffman we are talking about, Mr. nice guy who just one day before this told me that when people block our garage with their car I should leave them a polite warning note before calling the tow company. As far as neighbors go, he is as close to Mr. Rogers as possible minus the whole questionable, chester-molester vibe that Mr. Rogers gives off. Anyways, "Mr. Rogers" didn't take into account the fact that our neighbors across the street are total creepers and are constantly peering through their window and spying on the neighborhood. So despite the fact that it wasn't their car, they call the police and claim they saw the whole thing happen through their blinds. Freaks. So here I am, telling cops that Mr. Rogers would NEVER do something like that without leaving a note. Turns out he isn't a total asshole, and the reason that he didn't leave a note is because he can't speak or write in Dutch (duh) and thus was planning on trying to talk to the lady in person after the game... let's just say that didn't go so well. Damon spent 10 minutes trying to say sorry and that it was an accident while she just screamed at him in Dutch. The insurance completely covers it and she will have everything taken care of for her yet she has decided to be a nightmare, uber bitch, neighbor from hell. The best part of the whole thing ocurred yesterday when we were trying to get into our car and leave the house. We encounter said friendly neighbor, she lurks by our car and waits for us to reverse so that we are facing her, and then she puts on a bitter-beer face and flips us off while shaking her fist for a solid 10 seconds. Now that is definitely the first time I've ever had that happen! Now we are just waiting for the first time we come outside to find that our car has been keyed or someone has taken a baseball bat to the hood, at which point I will call the police and say that I saw the whole thing happen through the window and that I'm certain it was our neighbor, Mrs. Lucifer. Needless to say I now feel inclined to sarcastically wave, flip off, or flash the neighbors every time I walk outside with the hope that they are once again spying through their blinds.Within the last month, I have also had my first house guest. Now this is no ordinary house guest, it is Bongo. Bongo is a teammate of Damon's from Brown and has been a friend of ours for years, but let's just say that you don't get a nickname like "Bongo" unless you earn it. Bongo played basketball in Spain last year and is looking to get picked up by a team in Europe during the winter... (read as: Bongo might be my "roommate" for a month or more). Having guests is fun, but now I have two giant roommates that eat like hoover vacuumes, create lots of dishes, and leave a never ending pile of smelly workout clothes in the laundry room. Luckily I have been able to use Bongo for slave labor, and he most often comes in handy as a chaufeur considering my stick shift driving skills are not yet up to par. Clearly I have spent most of the last few weeks thinking about how we should probably have our own television show, but I just can't figure out which one we would be on... Three's Company perhaps? Real World Aalst, Mrs. Lucifer's Neighborhood, Belgium's Most Wanted, Desperate Belgian Housewives, Super Nanny, or Punked (joke's on me). As it turns out, Cheers is a front runner due to the fact that our house has become the neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name. (We now have a ping pong table and a kegerator... we're doomed). However, sometimes things occur that just prove to me that Bongo should have his own reality show in which we are just the supporting cast. For example we take Bongo out for a long night of drinking, come home, and the last time we see him he is passed out on our living room floor at 4 am. We awake the next day to a hand written note that says the following, "Huff + Alanna, Be back Tues at 3ish to get down like a tiger @ vball prac. Yours truly, Bongo. P.S. Thx 4 Living." Turns out Bongo drunkenly decided to go to Holland by train in the dead of night. Case in point. I almost died of laughter. Get this guy on television. I would definitely watch the Bongo show on a weekly basis because I know it would garuntee complete absurdity at all times. If you're going to have a house guest, you might as well have an entertaining one.
I am definitely missing a lot of things in this update and it is most likely due to the fact that I'm almost positive that I fully pickled my brain with tequila on Saturday night. Oops. So I could probably wait for another time to write about my first Dutch lesson, especially because I still haven't figured out how to make those noises come out of my mouth. I can at least understand when someone is asking me, "wat is jauw naam?" but unfortunately I can't answer them because I scrambled my brain. Bummer.
Over and out.
