Denver

I have been spending the eight days around Thanksgiving in Denver, CO, along with many, many people I have not seen in years. On Sunday my grandfather on my mother's side passed away and on Tuesday I flew out to Colorado. This was a starkly different Thanksgiving from the one I had been anticipating (going to Seth's house in NY for traditional turkey, pumpkin pie, and Black Friday shopping), but since Seth sadly could not make it to CO I came out by myself and was met by dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Amazingly and wonderfully the entire family came out for this, though it has taken me the past couple days to mentally and emotionally adjust. Not only has been strange being back in Denver (I was born here), but I also have not seen most of my aunts and uncles and cousins since the last time I was here, nine years ago. In fact, I have never met several of my younger cousins and many of the older ones I don't even recognize. And, our family is big--Mom is the oldest (and therefore the whip-cracker) of four sisters and five brothers. Each is married (except Aunt Phuong, who is divorced, though Uncle Vi is still very much a part of the family) but each interestingly has only one, two, or no kids. There are only 16 grandchildren from 10 sets of children.

I am staying with my parents, Andrew, Jennifer, Carter, and Aunt Phuong and her two daughters, Que (the oldest cousin, 29) and 'Little' Phuong (the cousin who visited us in Philly, 24) at Aunt Be and Uncle Peter's large, lovely house with their two kids, Angeline (6) and Austin (2). I has been great staying with them and catching up--there is so much to talk about! It has been also fun to watch Austin and Carter play, especially since Carter is a few weeks older than Austin, though technically 'Uncle' Austin is a generation older.

Wednesday afternoon was the pre-viewing at the funeral home, followed by a Pho dinner in the Vietnamese/Mexican part of town with Andrew and my Uncles Minh, Dien, and Tan, and Aunts Kim and Lieu. It is always a riot eating out with my family--they usually end up getting Andrew to eat all sorts of things, though he is a good sport about trying just about anything. They ordered us the Special Pho, and while I ate the beef flank and not much else of the meat, Andrew ate his tripe, tendon, and jellied pig blood. After dinner I managed to meet up with my high school friend, Danielle, and her boyfriend, Jason, who had been studying/working in Golden for the past few years.

Pho dinner

Andrew eating his pig blood... with a smile

After dinner our uncles treated us to xoi (sweet sticky rice), che (any of a variety of sweet rice and bean with coconut sauce desserts), and these little silver pyramids of steamed rice and meat

Coffee with Danielle and Jason