Last night we were the host home for our organization's Christmas dinner gathering for 25 people. I was in charge of baking a turkey. The turkey was from the U.S., so thankfully, it was packaged as I would normally expect it to be (just thought you'd all like to know I didn't have to pluck the feathers or anything like that!). Anyway, the gathering was originally supposed to happen a week ago, but one of our Mongolian employees had a death in her family that week, and we post poned the dinner so she could come. By the time the dinner had been post poned, though, my turkey was thawed, so I thought it would be best to bake the turkey and debone it, freezing it for one week later. It actually made for a less stressful day for the day of the event! Let me tell you why!
We came home from church and had no electricity. I actually thought the whole building was without electricity, so I was just patiently waiting for the electricity to come back on for over an hour. However, we realized the elevator was working, and so were the hall lights. This motivated me to investigate. So, with my Mongolian language dictionary in hand, I went to see our building manager (jujor) who does not know a stitch of English. I was able to communicate to her that our electricity wasn't working and she was able to communicate to me that we needed to pay our bill. Somehow, the electric company thought we hadn't paid our electric bill. So, Sunday at 11:30, they disconnected our electricity. Not a good thing to happen when you're having 25 people show up for a 5 pm dinner!
Our conversation was getting complicated, so we went hunting for a translator in the building. Fortunately, both of our Mongolian neighbors on our floor are also fluent in English. One was home and helped us through the problem. As it turned out, we HAD paid our bill, the electrical man came to re-connect our electricity at 4 pm, and he gave me a bill which needs to be paid to re-connect our electricity (is that fair, since it was unjustly disconnected? Probably allowed in this culture...and it's only about $2.25...but stilllllllllll!). I was glad I had, #1....baked my turkey last week; and #2.....had electricity just in time to warm up the thawed turkey in my frig! I made a delicious thin gravy to drizzle over the re-heating turkey, and it tasted freshly roasted. Several people commented that the turkey was good, and a very honest teammate (who knew my whole story), asked how I got the turkey to be so moist doing it this way. All I can say, is I'm thankful for perfect timing!
2 comments:
In the States, I would fight the reinstatement fee tooth and nail! But two bucks? In a culture that's not my own? Probably not.
So glad your turkey turned out good.
Thank you for preparing this blog for all of us to read. I know many people probably read it and do not comment. But please know that it is so worth your while to do it for us. We miss you and every little bit of your life that you can share with us is wonderful. Thank you SO much!
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