Thanksgiving in New Jersey

This Thanksgiving I spent the holiday in New Jersey with my friends Kiyan and Dan. We stayed at Kiyan's house for the weekend. On Wednesday Dan and I took the bus from Port Authority to Montvale, where Kiyan lives, and he picked us up from the bus stop. We drove to his house and hung out there for about an hour and a half or so, talking to his parents and figuring out our next course of action. Kiyan and Dan wanted to go to an arcade to play dance games (like DDR) so we went in search of the arcade. That was an adventure in and of itself, we drove around in circles basically trying to find this place. We found it eventually, and we spent about an hour and a half there. I read a book I brought while Dan and Kiyan played their games. Then we went back to the house and watched a movie called Ride Along. I'd wanted to see it when it was in theaters a while back but I never did. It was funny, but not quite what I was expecting.

Then the next day was Thanksgiving! The food was amazing, Kiyan's mom is a wonderful chef. We had turkey and stuffing, broccoli, asparagus, biscuits, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and something she called scalloped potatoes. They kind of reminded me of potatoes au gratin that I've had in the past, but these were cooked in some kind of creamy white sauce with mushrooms. For dessert we had homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie. The apple pie was so yummy! She made it based on a recipe she's had for something like twenty years, and it's probably the best apple pie I've had. She made everything from scratch, even the crust. Then after dinner and dessert we watched A Most Wanted Man, but I didn't see too much of it because I fell asleep about twenty minutes into the movie. Oh well!

Friday was nice and relaxing, we all slept in and then had open-face turkey and stuffing sandwiches for lunch. YUM!!! Best way to have next-day Thanksgiving food. We sat around for a bit trying to decide what we wanted to do, and then we came up with the idea of going and seeing Mockingjay. Dan hadn't seen the second Hunger Games movie, so we watched that while Kiyan did some work, and then we headed to a mall to get food and see the movie. The mall we went to was GIANT!! Even bigger than the San Francisco Westfield one, this was four floors and easily three times the size of Valley Fair in San Jose. Oh. My. Goodness. We ate at Yard House and I had really yummy pasta (Mom we should go to the one by us) and then saw Mockingjay. It was a really good movie! I love the Hunger Games series, I've read all the books, and I really enjoyed this movie. It's part one of two which is annoying because it means we have to wait until next Thanksgiving I think to see the end of it. Then after the movie Kiyan's parents picked us up and drove us into the city. They only live about 35 minutes away without any traffic, because they're right on the border of New York and New Jersey. Which, for someone from California where you drive 35 minutes (let alone two hours) and you're still in the same state, is a foreign concept.