Last weekend, the galley presented Thanksgiving Dinner for everyone on the pole.  It was bittersweet to be away from family for everyone, but we all had a good time.  They had the dinner on Saturday – partially because everyone here works 6 days a week and gets Sunday off.  There are so many people here right now (~150) that we had to eat in shifts – the galley can only seat about 80 at a time.  We all also spent the day helping out in various ways – I washed dishes for a while, and some friends of mine did things like carrying food upstairs, decorating, and serving wine.

We started the evening in the hallway – everyone was given mulled cider and lots of tasty food while we all talked and waited for the dinner proper to start.  Some people were dressed up, some were… less.  I certainly didn’t pack my suit down here.  When everything was ready, we went into the room.  As we sat down, we were greeted to jokes and some kind words from station management.  It wasn’t quite like home, but it was a very nice evening.

You can see from the menu that they went all out – I tried a bit of most things, and everything was delicious.  The stuffing was especially tasty.  We were eating the pumpkin cheesecake for desserts for a while after, but that was perfectly fine with me – they even garnished it with cranberry sauce.  My favorite dessert was actually the flourless chocolate cake, but like I said, everything was delicious.  We didn’t have quite as many left overs of that for long.

The meal went fairly quickly – afterwards, everyone broke into smaller groups to go watch movies.  This was especially important, because the satellite was down that evening.  Thankfully for the galley, they got yesterday off to compensate for the enormous amount of work they put in – they actually came and toured the ICL.  I’m told we do something similar for Christmas, and I’m looking forward to it.