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As you know, last weekend was Independence Day here in the States and a three-day weekend for everyone. For us, we packed up our car completely full–with things tied to the roof!–and made the long drive up to my parents’ home in Bozeman, Montana. We were selling our car there the next day, so we ended up hitting the road sooner than planned. We did arrive in time for some fireworks, but mostly we were too exhausted to celebrate much.
I normally don’t go all-out for the Fourth of July–I am much more an all-out-for-Christmas-girl, and in fact, it’s been awhile since I was able to go crazy for the Fourth.
Two years ago, Colorado was on fire, so there were no fireworks of any kind–not even sparklers!
For the Fourth of July last year, I was in China.
While it may have been easy to find fireworks if I had been in a larger city (or if I had tried…), I was busy with my internship for my graduate program, deep in rural Sichuan province.
The Sichuan province is in central China, famous for its natural beauty, pandas, and it’s close proximity to the wilds of Tibet (is well as its devastating earthquakes, which is why our internship was based there). After the smog of Beijing, I loved the fresh air and the green humidity of the Sichuan province, as well as the rural rice farms and friendly natives.
While we (me and my fellow classmates also completing their internship) didn’t celebrate traditionally, our Chinese teammates helped us buy the ingredients for an “American” meal (beef, potatoes for fries, corn, watermelon) as well as Pabst Blue Ribbon. I guess, in China, there is nothing more American than good old Pabst Blue Ribbon. (And maybe that’s true here in the States, as well…).
We were even given the day off to make our giant feast. It took a large part of the day to find the ingredients–especially the oil for the fries! We ended up using an oil I hadn’t seen before, but I’m thinking maybe it was saffron oil?
We also had to make all of this in two pots, one pan, and with one hot plate.
First of all, I had never made fries in oil before (oven-baked all the way!) so it took awhile to figure out when to add the potatoes to the oil, if it was hot enough, how much oil to add, etc.
We then formed the burgers by combining onions, beef we ground up with our hands, and as many spices we could find as possible. Mostly salt and pepper…beware of Sichuan pepper!
Everything was actually a delicious success–except the corn never cooked correctly–and that PBR never tasted as good.
Linking up with Bonnie, Sammy, Van and Kaelene!
Have you spent holidays unique to your country/culture abroad? Have you celebrated anyway?
Ahhhh! Pandas! Adorable!
I KNOW!!! Tooooo cute.
Looks like quite the feast – you did a good job, even if it was more difficult in China! The photos were amazing too. My friend Kim is off to China this summer, she is so excited!
Thanks! 🙂 and how exciting for your friend! Although I don’t know much about China as I was only there two months, if she needs any tips, pass on my info and I can tell her what I know 🙂
Ah that is so cool! I never celebrated much of the national holiday when I’m home but when I’m abroad then I feel the need to show my colours a bit and get a bit of home (in the form of food). Love that burger with toast bread haha
Haha that was the closest thing we had to a bun!! I think I was more patriotic on this holiday, too, because I was a little homesick for America!
Celebrating Christmas abroad was always kind of a bummer because I had to work on Christmas Eve! And I think Christmas Day was only a holiday because it was on a weekend. . .not sure anymore. But it was fun having alternate celebrations with my friends, like making blueberry pancakes or putting together weird potlucks since none of us had ovens.
I think it’s hard to celebrate holidays abroad, especially somewhere where they don’t celebrate your favorite ones. It’s great that you and your friends still found small ways to celebrate, though 🙂
So cool that you celebrated even though you were in China and great that your Chinese friends had fun too! We don’t celebrate our national day in Germany as much as you do in the States. I mean it’s a bank holiday but that’s about it! But I’ve been in Sweden during their national day and during Midsommar and had a lot of fun celebrating with them 😉
It was a fun celebration! It was so sweet of them and I loved that they were so excited to find us that American beer haha (which I actually kind of hate!). The Swedes sound like they know how to celebrate their national holidays, too! I would love to be there during Midsommar.
What a feast!! I am more of a Christmas girl too 🙂 I was in Paris for Australia Day and it was freeeezing. So much different to how I usually spend it!
Christmas is just the best! I can’t imagine it in Australia, though! I’m used to it being so so cold.
What an awesome way to spend the 4th!!! It is one of my absolutely dreams to go into the mountains of china! Love love your pictures.
Thank you so much for your comment, and for reading! I loved the mountains in China and I would love to go back and explore even more–it’s such a huge, diverse country!
That’s so awesome you were able to celebrate 4th of July in Sichuan and share it with your Chinese teammates! The food looks yummy! The mountain looks awesome and omg pandas in their natural setting – how lovely!!
Well while pandas are native to the Sichuan province we unfortunately were only able to see them in a panda reserve! Still, so adorable :). and we definitely had a looooong hike to see them so it felt like they were in the middle of the forest, at least.
ah ok that makes sense probably for their protection. haha at least you got a workout from the hike 🙂