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Thanksgiving — like the universe — is expanding.

Traditionally a time for Americans to pause and give thanks to a Supreme Being — for health or harvest or happenstance, Thanksgiving is evolving before our very eyes into a holiday where we give thanks to each other as well.

Just this week we received Thanksgiving-themed thank-you notes from a doctor's office, a lawyers' association, a New Jersey congressman and others. Can Thanksgiving-themed gift cards be far behind?

It's not a bad idea. Saying thank you to more people.

So, in the widening spirit of the season: Thank you everyone for sending us reports of Thanksgiving 2013 celebrations in other countries. Thank you for sharing your photos and stories with us. Thank you for helping us get glimpses into what it's like to be an American where you are. Thank you for showing us your food. And your families. And your friends. And your surroundings.

Thank you to colleague, Melody Kramer, for juggling the social media aspects of the Xpat Project, which is scheduled to continue until Christmas.

Thank you to all other NPR colleagues, especially those working the long holiday weekend to continue to give the LURVers — Listeners, Users, Readers and Viewers — of NPR meaningful stories.

Thank you to our NPR bosses for letting us experiment with this idea — not knowing whether it would be a triumph or, well, a turkey.

And, year-round, thank you to you.

**

As part of The Xpat Project, NPR asked American expatriates to send stories and photos of their 2013 Thanksgiving observances in other countries. Now follows an edited sampling — updated now and then over the next few days:

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Unless Congress acts quickly, taking mass transit to work is about to get more expensive for some people.

For the past four years, public transportation users and people who drive their cars to work and pay for parking have been able set aside up to $245 a month in wages tax free if they're used for commuting costs or workplace parking.

The transit tax break expires at the end of the year. So starting Jan. 1, the benefit for riders will be cut nearly in half — to $130 a month. Drivers, on the other hand, will get a slightly bigger break as their parking benefit rises to $250.

"It doesn't make sense at all, the fact that you get a bigger tax break for driving your car than riding a train," says Dan Smith, who lobbies Congress on tax issues for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. He says many commuters don't realize that the parity for transit and parking tax breaks vanishes in the new year. But they soon will.

Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who rides his bike to work, is sounding the alarm.

"We've heard lots of talk about fiscal cliffs, a dairy cliff, but at the end of the year, we are facing a transit commuter cliff," he says.

Blumenauer has rounded up five House Republicans and 44 fellow Democrats to co-sponsor legislation that would keep the parking subsidy, which by law is automatically renewed, equal to the transit subsidy, which requires congressional approval every year:

"You might tilt it the other way and provide greater benefit for people who are having less impact on the planet," he says. "But the fact is, this is embedded, ingrained and accepted, so we want to at least just have transit parity for the full range of commuter options."

Indeed, eliminating or even reducing the parking subsidy is a bipartisan non-starter in Congress.

"My own view is there are some people — many people — who don't have the luxury of being able to take transit," says Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The California Democrat defends the tax break for people who drive to work:

"I don't agree that you should put one group against the other," she says. "I think we should encourage fuel-efficient cars, and if someone really needs their car for work, I don't have a problem with saying, you know what, there's enough expense here, we can make sure that this isn't exorbitant for you."

That's unfortunate, says Elyse Lowe. She's one of Boxer's constituents as well as the executive director of Move San Diego, a group advocating smart growth in that city. For Lowe, it makes sense to subsidize public transit users, not drivers:

"This is at the heart of getting people to change their travel behaviors through economic incentives," she says, "and typically people don't actually look at their own personal behavior until there's some sort of economic reason to do so."

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse agrees. He's skeptical, though, that Congress can act in time to keep the transit break on par with the parking subsidy.

"What certainly doesn't make sense is to favor that over using public transportation. But given the general level of blockade of anything and everything by our Republican friends around here, I can't promise that we'll get to that."

Making parity between transit and parking subsidies — one more casualty of congressional gridlock.

It's around dinner time at Honeygrow, a casual restaurant in central Philadelphia.

Erin Campbell was on her way here to meet a friend when she realized, with panic, that her cellphone battery was dying.

"I noticed I only had 14 percent [battery] left, and I actually texted her on my way in to see if she could bring a charger with her," Campbell says.

But Campbell's friend told her there was no need to bring a charger — just inside the door of Honeygrow is a kiosk where customers can charge their phones.

To use a kiosk at Honeygrow, a customer picks an empty pod from the kiosk and opens a tiny door with a key that's in the lock. Inside, there are power cords for iPhones 4 and 5, BlackBerries and Androids. Customers plug in their phones, lay the phone on the shelf and lock the door with the key.

Campbell charges her phone here during dinner. After eating, she stops to unlock the little door and unplug her phone. Success: The battery is up to 66 percent.

Charging The Lifeline

Philadelphia entrepreneur Doug Baldasare founded ChargeItSpot after his own brush with phone battery death a few years ago when he was out with friends.

"All of our phones were dead so we were saying, you know, 'How are we going to find each other?' " he says. "I pointed to a store — it happened to be an Urban Outfitters — and I said, 'Why can't I walk in there and charge my phone?' "

Now Baldasare's company has phone-charging kiosks in some Urban Outfitters locations, as well as Whole Foods, a ski resort in Colorado and other retailers and restaurants in a half-dozen states.

"We need our phones so much every day in our lives — we clutch them like it's part of us; it's a lifeline," he says. "When our phones run low, we're really anxious."

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Enrolling in HealthCare.gov is not easy, and it's been particularly difficult in Alaska. Just 53 people enrolled in the first month.

Anchorage hair stylist Lara Imler is one of the few who got through, as we previously reported. But Imler discovered problems with her application, and now she wants to cancel her enrollment.

"I don't even know how to feel about the whole thing anymore because I can't even get anyone who has an answer to help," she says. "It's just such a lost cause at this point."

A few things went wrong with Imler's HealthCare.gov application. First, according to the website, she successfully enrolled in a health plan. But her new insurance company, Moda Health, didn't have her application. When she called the HealthCare.gov hotline, no one could help her figure out what went wrong.

Then, she found out the website miscalculated her subsidy. She was supposed to receive a monthly subsidy of $366, but the website only let her use $315.

"The subsidy issue is weird," she says. "If you look at my profile on the website it shows my full subsidy, but it says I'm only using part of it. So they know I've got a screwed up subsidy but they don't know what to do with it. There's no one directly you can talk to, to say, 'Hey my subsidy is on there. How do I apply for all of it?'"

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Persistence Pays Off For Uninsured Alaskan