A day for giving thanks

This past Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving, one of the major holidays of the US. For some families it’s even more important than Christmas because it’s a holiday when families come together to carve the turkey and give thanks for all the wonderful things in their lives.

According to Wikipedia, the event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated to give thanks to God for guiding them safely to the New World. The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 53 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. Of course, we all know that the Native Americans were slaughtered after but it’s still a great holiday for stuffing your face and giving thanks!

And on that note, I would like to give thanks to our 6 wonderful friends that turned this Thanksgiving into a lovely ‘Friendsgiving’ (the new name given to the occasion when you spend it with friends instead of family) and also for helping us christen our apartment. 

Tom, the turkey, went in at noon and after champagne, wine and cheese we started eating at 5pm, by the end of the night we were stuffed, drunk and very thankful -  a great holiday indeed :D

Black Friday 'marred by violence'

Seriously?!

This morning I woke up and looked at the BBC news headlines as I often do to find the following headline “Violence mars US retail bonanza”! Now, for those that don’t know, which was me up to a year ago as well, Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving when all retail stores open their store hours earlier than usual (some even at midnight) with amazing discounts thus beginning the holiday shopping craze…

I avoided it by staying home, my wallet has been hit hard enough as it is with the move, it did not need any more unnecessary temptations! However, for some people, the financial crisis has really brought out their inner rage in bargain hunting:

According to the BBC “The start of the US holiday shopping season was marred by shootings and pepper-sprayings as bargain-hunters stampeded stores”. Stampeded, seriously!? One of the incidents involved a woman who pepper-sprayed fellow shoppers that were trying to get their hands on new Xbox 360s… that just gives a whole new meaning to crazy. Another incident involved a man being shot because he didn’t want to hand over his purchases to a robber that was waiting for shoppers outside a Walmart in California! Coincidentally, both incidents occurred at a Walmart…bad rap for them I’m afraid… or maybe just a bad rap for shopping!

How about this Christmas we go back to basics with gift-giving! My mom nowadays, for example, is only interested in three kinds of gifts: beauty products, food products or charity gifts…all three of which can be consumed without filling up the house with more unnecessary rubbish that we don’t need! How about making your own gift or Secret Santa with a limit on spending…this crisis has hit everybody hard, there’s no need to bring further violence into it just because your son must have the new Xbox 360, people!

Some of the neighborhood art

Halloween in New York!

This past weekend was, as most of you know, Halloween, the wackiest holiday that Americans adore!

Kids love it, grown-ups love it, candy and fake blood everywhere not to mention some of the craziest costumes you’ll ever see, what’s not to love??

It’s just a great holiday! I remember when I was younger my mom would make my costumes and I would go trick or treating in the neighborhood and then my mom would turn our garage into a haunted house and have crazy Halloween parties, where once she even managed to get the Portuguese ambassador to dress like a girl! (Oops, probably shouldn’t mention that, oh well, he’s retired anyways!) It was a lot of fun so I was very happy to get a chance to relive Halloween in the US all over again!

But if you’re in New York for Halloween you cannot miss the West Village parade! Granted, it’s crowded and it’s super hard to get a great viewing place but luckily our friend got there early and we had one of the best ‘seats’ in the house, here are some of the crazy costumes we saw:

Patrick Bateman - American Psycho ~ this guy was so committed he even created his own Patrick Bateman business cards (I know this because he gave me one!), his photo even made it to the newspaper the next day!! 

Crazy eyeball guys ~ there were a lot of those circling around…

It’s Beetlejuice and his ‘bride’ Lydia!!!

It’s “Occupy Sesame Street”!! Get it? It’s a play on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement that’s going on at the moment, I thought this was absolutely brilliant!

It’s Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinski and the stain!!!! LOVE it! 

It's stuff like this that just makes me think I'm definitely not creative or imaginative enough! Honestly, I wish I could post all the crazy costumes up here but there just isn't enough space!

The parade did bring back memories though...more than 10 years ago, my mom decided that she wanted to walk in the parade so she bought herself a Wicked Queen costume and I borrowed a Snow White costume from a friend (mind you though that she was 12 when she wore it and I was 17 at the time I was wearing it, not creepy at all!) but off we went to join the parade, it was cold and we had to wait for ages to get started but it turned out to be a lot of fun!

Thanks New York, just keep it coming!