Thanksgiving
Hey guys! (Or has they say in NZ - Hiya!)
Over the past few months I’ve been busily transitioning from life in Austin to life in Auckland. It’s been wild. What started out as #3monthsin1suitcase has turned into #austintoauckland. And y’all, it has been wonderful, stressful, amazing, cringe worthy, all the things. I’ve been contemplating how to make this account relevant to my new life, and I’ve settled on focusing on all of the differences between life in Austin and life in Auckland. The two cities sound so similar, but there are some very real differences that I want to explore.
Given the time of year, it seems only appropriate to start with….. Thanksgiving.
Now clearly Thanksgiving is an American holiday not celebrated in New Zealand, but get this: everyone here knows it is Thanksgiving in the US. More Kiwis wished me Happy Thanksgiving than Americans. Multiple people quizzed me on the details of our Thanksgiving menu and several people jokingly offered to take the leftovers off my hands, especially the pies. Fortunately, the ingredients for a full throttle American Thanksgiving are generally available. Case in point: a whole turkey. While my usual grocery store didn’t carry them, a nearby “fancy” grocery store had a freezer full of turkeys. In fact, we even met a new American neighbor at the Farro turkey freezer as we learned all about the differences in turkey sizing.In the US, I looked for a 12 pound bird if I was feeding 12 people and wanted to ensure leftovers. In New Zealand, turkeys are given a dress size. I had a choice between a size 4, 5, or 6 turkey, which translated to a 3.75 kg, 4.75 kg, or 5.75 kg bird. I then had to whip out the Google to convert and learn that meant a 8.27 lb., 10.47 lb., or 12.68 lb. We had 14 people RSVP for our Thanksgiving dinner, 6 of whom were 5 and under. I went for the size 6 turkey and gladly paid my $100 NZD - or about $66 USD. In my mind, this wasn’t an exorbitant amount to pay, but then I checked the average cost-per-pound in the U.S. this year for turkeys, and it was $1.36 per pound. Compared to that, I was getting gorged, but honestly I don’t remember ever paying less than $80-$90 for a whole turkey in previous years. Perhaps the tryptophan has played mind tricks on me? Who knows.
Other Thanksgiving staples that are everywhere, all year round in New Zealand include sweet potatoes, but they’re called kumara here. And kumara are everywhere. Any restaurant you walk in will have kumara on the menu, probably prepared 8 different ways. Green beans are always at the grocery store. Pumpkins, too. Plus apples. A lot of US apples actually come from New Zealand, but the best ones are saved for local sale.
One of the quirks about Auckland is that most American name brand products are available at a store called Martha’s Backyard. If there was something that I really, really wanted - say, a specific type of canned cranberries - I could drive 15 minutes, pay three times more than I would back in the States, but leave with anything my red, white, and blue heart desired.
Another aspect of Thanksgiving that is near and dear to my heart is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. My Thanksgiving was never complete without listening to cheesy commentary about oversized balloons. In the past, this has been difficult in our TV-free home. (I digress, but we’ve been TV-free for about 10 years.) Inevitably, my husband would work some technological miracle to obtain a live stream on the computer, and it was never the NBC commentary I wanted. This year - hallelujah! - Both the CBS and NBC feeds were on YouTube. Yes, I had to watch commercials for small town Alabama, but I got to watch the performances, dancers, bad lip-syncers (here’s to you, Dianna Ross!) and balloon handlers in all of their glory. It was magnificent. Even better, I got to watch the parade both on our Friday morning (Thursday in the U.S.) and again on Saturday when I was preparing for our actual Thanksgiving feast.
Which brings me to the last bit of Thanksgiving differences between Austin and Auckland. It just wasn’t feasible to celebrate on Thursday. To point out the obvious, the country doesn’t shut down. People still work and the kids go to school, so the best time to sit down with three other American families was on Saturday evening. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. We had an amazing time and bonded over our first Thanksgiving in a foreign land. It was enjoyable to celebrate with other Americans, though I think next year I’d make it a point to invite a Kiwi family so they could have a little taste of Thanksgiving, too. I know there’s a lot of interest!
