A bit after 6:30 people started arriving and since the buzzer up to our flat does not work, each time more people arrived, I had to go down the stairs to open the doors. A lot of people arrived within two minutes, so I left a quiet flat and came back to lots of laughter and an overwhelming amount of food. People quickly took seats and once everyone had arrived and food was warm, we were able to eat. Everyone was actually quite civilized and we had plenty of food! We had a wonderful assortment of food including two stuffings, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberries, rolls, salads, chicken, gravy, roasted potatoes, and several dishes that I am forgetting at the moment. We had lots of food so people could have seconds and thirds and lots of wine to accompany the meal.
At one point, someone was taking a group picture, and as everyone was smiling at the camera, Peter yelled "Fire", standing up and pouring water onto the table. It seems that one of the styrofoam plates had gotten too close to the candle and caught on fire. Thankfully, the water took care of the fire and we were all laughing for several minutes.
Afterwards, we had pie (there were 10) and some people had coffee. As I was talking with people, I noticed a plate catch on fire, but did not want to pour wine (in my hand at the moment) on it so I blew it out and that actually worked. Who knew? Then I poured my water onto the plate for good measure. We decided that it would be a good time to extinguish all of the candles and there were no more fires after that.
Finally, I was able to briefly Skype home. It was really confusing as several people would talk at once and I could here background talking as well, but I was able to see almost everyone at home so it was very nice.
All in all, Thankgiving was a huge success. I think that we were all impressed that we had such a successful dinner and were very proud of ourselves.
