Thanksgiving: The Aussie/American Initiation

Thanksgiving, that great feast the most American families look forward to for time together, a long weekend of cooking, eating..and for some, the black friday gallop to the stores.

While discussing our own upcoming celebration, working out what to do here in Australia, my oldest child and I were interested to hear some celeb gossip on the radio,

concerning Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and how they were not spending thanksgiving with Brads mum.  Though what interested us more was the radio personality mentioned Thanksgiving 'coming up this weekend' not realizing that she was speaking about this on Thursday 24th November - Thanksgiving day. 
Australia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, it being an American (and Canadian) tradition and holiday, and naturally, this radio personality didn't realize 'Thanksgiving weekend' actually started on the Thursday as a long weekend.  I found this interesting, being Australian, having had resided in the US for so long, it had reoccured to me that I had had the opportunity to l.i.v.e this stuff, knowing what Thanksgiving weekend, black Friday and cyber Monday etc meant in general conversation, unlike some of my fellow compatriates.  It was one of those epiphanies that lept out and said 'ohh yeah, well, they wouldn't know, would they'. 

But that realization also confirmed that our Thanksgiving project - trying to find a restaurant to celebrate in, may be a little tricky. Namely because of the obvious, not a holiday here mate. Our social experimentation, trying to explain this to friends was also tricky in a humorous sense, using excuses to procrastinate for the day or endow oneself as 'princess for the day' because one just wanted to not do much, didn't go over at ALL...

'...but its THANKSGIVING!' 
'ahh, no, its thursday...'

Tricky it was, to a certain extent. 
Because we are in a small town, with not many stores, and no restaurants to speak of, we had to travel into the nearest larger town, with a few restaurants, approximately 1 hour away, give or take 15 minutes or so, depending on road work.

We were given the name of a sports club, and a restaurant at the same location, so after traveling in, we were intiated into the real world of restauranting practices in the local area.  They open for lunch, and close until 5 or 6pm.  Of course we arrived at 2:15pm, and everything was closed. 

Trying to explain to the receptionist that we were looking for a restaurant in which to have Thanksgiving was to no avail.  It was suggested we go to the cafe past the gaming area to get sandwiches. 
...But its Thanksgiving!..(don't bother using this expression, it really doesn't work, we've tested it several times, hehehe) nothing from the receptionist... of course...
Auto sad pout faces occured and we slipped out, dejected from our formerly chosen feasting venue. 

So driving around, realizing there probably wasn't going to be much open, we opted for the only available location - now when I say opted, we saw it, realized it was actually open and with just a tad of excitement decided in approx 3 seconds that we should go there -  a restaurant - but not having had very good reviews from a friend, I was dubious. But we ventured in anyway, deciding between ourselves that if it was bad, we'd sit there and laugh about it.  It was great actually.  No telling why this friend believed it was not such a hot place, but that's ok. 

So with just the 2 of us, my youngest being away at a school camp, we were formally initiated to a Thanksgiving in Australia. We learned that saying 'but its thanksgiving' much the same way as people would say 'but its my birthday' or 'but its Christmas' or whatever, has no sigificant impact on people in Australia - no kidding huh...nope doesn't work at all!