Thanksgiving Dinner

So, a friend of ours invited us to a Thanksgiving dinner at her church a few weeks ago. We were very excited by the prospect of free dinner, but we didn't really consider the possibility that we were probably being coerced into a huge church service. When we arrived, we found out that this was in fact the case. The service started out very harmless- there was a little orchestra and piano player playing Christmas music, a theater group, and a dance group. The dance group was pretty hilarious- it was a group of 25-30 year olds, dancing to a Christian pop song- the dance was a similar a caliber to what my grade 5 lunch hour dance group was capable of (a lot like Napeleon Dynamite's sign language dance).


Then the service morphed into an hour long speech about the importance of accepting Jesus into our lives, from an intense, self-righteous pastor. He told us how bloodshed is the only way to true salvation, and that Jews, Muslims, and Hindis are all banished from heaven because their leaders did not sacrifice themselves to save their followers. The pastor then asked the audience some supposedly rhetorical questions "What have Mohammed and Buddah done for their followers? No blood was shed. No sacrifice was made. Therefore, there is no room for them in heaven!” to which a protesting member of the congregation answered, “They give their people hope and love!”. This reply was quickly dismissed by the pastor, who cried, “Yes, but there was no blood!” He then asked everyone to open their hearts to Jesus, and asked everyone who believed in Jesus as their personal saviour to stand and acknowledge one another, while the heathens remained sitting. I was a bit worried, listening to the chairs creaking that everyone was standing, but actually the whole room remained sitting. At least there was nice pianist playing in the background.

After this exhausting sermon, we were finally released and allowed to go eat dinner. I had about 5 pieces of apple and pumpkin pie to compensate for the past hour. I also won a free dinner for two at this Mexican restaurant, and a free chap stick, which raised my spirits! After dinner, we quickly escaped to a pub across the street. It was snowing- our first snow of the season- and everyone was outside, throwing snowballs, slipping on the sidewalks, or hiding under a protective awning. After unwinding with a couple of drinks and discussing the evening for a couple of hours, we walked our friend Becky back to her place.

By the time we left, it was about 11:30, giving us ample time to get home before the subway stopped at 12:30. Unfortunately, they shut the subways down at 12:00 on the weekends, which we found out when we were kicked off the train at its last stop, still relatively far away from our apartment. So, along with several hundred other passengers, we climbed the stairs out to the street, to try and compete with everyone else to catch one of the few available cabs. After about 45 minutes of standing in the snow, watching many full cabs drive by us, a sympathetic man came over to offer us a ride with his brother in law, to an area close to our place. He told us he was going to a hotel, so we could easily catch a cab from there. So, we waited with this man for another 45 minutes. It turned out that he was the Korean diplomat to Central and South America, in Seoul for a conference on the reunification of Korea. Interesting to talk to, but I couldn’t really hear him over the chattering of my teeth. His brother finally arrived at about 1:20 (only 80 minutes after we got out of the subway terminal), and he drove us to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel at 2:00, only to find out that the last guy had been waiting for a cab for over an hour, so we decided to walk to 40 minutes home. We arrived home soaking and cold, and put our shoes and pants in the dryer.

The next morning, when I got our stuff out of the dryer, I found the remains of my melted plastic container of chap stick, and my coupon, in tatters. So, it’s true: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. No matter. I saved $5 on the cab ride home.