This year we celebrated our first thanksgiving with our new friends from Haas. As I’ve mentioned in the past, there is an amazing group of people living in the UC Village (aka “The Village People”) that became really close friends, and we try to celebrate all major events together.

Progressive Thanksgiving Meal
The holiday events started with the traditional thanksgiving meal, only due to the large number of participants, it was split into three events. We started at David and Hannah’s apartment with drinks and appetizers.


After everyone got into the right holiday spirit, we moved to Christine and Vince for the main Thanksgiving meal, including the traditional turkey, professionally prepared and cut by Vince’s father - a turkey expert. During the meal Vince told us the story behind the holiday and each of us wrote (anonymously) what he or she are thankful for this year.

After the meal we all went to Sagy and Moran’s for deserts and (some more) drinks. At this point the Texan people in the group went to see the traditional thanksgiving football game while the rest of us went to play the traditional Rock Band game (we are turning this into a tradition, just have a little patience).

Black Friday
The Friday that follow thanksgiving is known as Black Friday, and it marks the beginning of the huge sales season that ends after the new year arrives. It is called Black Friday because this is the day in which most retailers more from red ink in their books (i.e. losses) to black ink (profits). One of the traditional ways of celebrating the day is DoorBusters - special offers of products in really cheap prices that are offered in a very limited number to the first customers. And the stores are opened at 5am. This creates huge lines throughout the night of people trying to be the first to win these sales. This year things went so crazy that a WallMart employee died as the crowd tried to get in the store. I had to see this for myself, so I woke up at 5 am and drove to the nearest WallMart, but since I arrived at 6am, most of the attractive items were already gone. Yes, it’s that crazy.

Going Out
That very Friday we went out with the Village People to celebrate Jack (Amanda’s husband) birthday. We went to a great Italian restaurant in Berkeley, had some great Italian wine and shared huge family-style dishes. From there we continued to the Albatross, a very nice American-style Berkeley pub, which not only offers all kinds of beer and snacks, but also has several special darts booths. I would be really Happy to meet the guy who thought that giving sharp, dangerous objects to drunk people is a good idea. Luckily, the evening ended without casualties.

Movie Night

The Village Thanksgiving weekend events ended the next day (Saturday night) at our place with a festive screening of the 80’s classic Top Secret. Jack and Amanda brought home-made Hummus which was absolutely fantastic, Shauli brought old scotch and cigars and everyone got into the right mood for this hilarious spoof.

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