Thanksgiving is a holiday that we try to celebrate in the spirit that it was intended (no, not the Native Americans rescuing the Pilgrims and then getting destroyed by disease) but the spirit of gratitude and thankfulness.\u00a0 This year, the celebration was a lot of fun. \u00a0We went to the Inn at Little Washington with some friends for the meal.\u00a0 We were gone the weekend before to Miami for the Best Buddies Miami gala and going to Miami that weekend meant that Jim did not have time to brine a turkey, and we ALL know that you can’t have un-brined turkey for Thanksgiving. \u00a0My parents then came into town as my aunt and uncle who live in Bethesda turned 80 this fall (by Chinese counting, anyway–by American counting, they are 79). \u00a0Other members of the Liang clan also descended in the area. \u00a0It was really lovely seeing my parents and cousins, aunts, and uncles that I hadn’t seen in a while. \u00a0However, I am also thankful that Thanksgiving is a short holiday. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42 \u00a0My cousin, Lucy, gave a speech in honor of her parents and asked me to interpret for the non-English speaking relatives at the dinner. \u00a0This was an immensely stressful obligation. \u00a0It’s much easier for me to translate from Chinese to English, so I spent most of the Monday of Thanksgiving week looking up all sorts of words in my handy-dandy translator that we got when we were in Taipei last summer. \u00a0And, of course, when I asked Lu, my co-founder who grew up in China how to say “with gratitude and appreciation,” he looked at me and said, “I have no idea. \u00a0Chinese people don’t say things like that.” \u00a0It\u2019s nice to know that the lack of positive reinforcement in our family is a cultural thing, not a personal thing.<\/p>\n
P.S.\u00a0 The translation went over better than expected.\u00a0 My aunt and uncle were certainly appreciative!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanksgiving is a holiday that we try to celebrate in the spirit that it was intended (no, not the Native Americans rescuing the Pilgrims and then getting destroyed by disease) but the spirit of gratitude and thankfulness.\u00a0 This year, the celebration was a lot of fun. \u00a0We went to the Inn at Little Washington with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[6,327,328],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-holidays","category-things-chinese","tag-chinese","tag-family","tag-holidays"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-n","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}