Thanksgiving late but not late

Our team has found our way to Christchurch New Zealand where we are making our preparations for deployment to the ice. The United States Antarctic Program is located at the Christchurch airport where scientists are issued their heavy Antarctic clothing, pack all their scientific gear, and load up on one of several military transport planes (either a C-17 or the tried and true C-130) that fly to the main US base in Antarctica, McMurdo Station. This whole process takes a couple of days to get ready for deployment.

Consumed in the business of preparations, we suddenly realized that we had forgotten all about the Thanksgiving holiday! Sometimes Americans forget that holidays sacred to us pass by in other countries without note. We discovered this minor lapse in memory on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. However, a reasonable compromise soon came to mind. Since New Zealand is across the International Date Line from the US, we are a day head of everyone back home. It being Friday here is actually Thursday back in the States. So the solution to this problem became apparent. We celebrated our Thanksgiving on Friday evening in New Zealand which just happened to be the same time that all our families back home were also celebrating.