Thanksgiving part 2

This Thanksgiving was very different from all my previous ones. It was my first Thanksgiving away from my family. However, they weren't to far away thanks to a lovely invention called skype. With the video conference I was able to join them Friday morning my time and Thursday evening their time as dinner was coming to a close. While they had their turkey feast I enjoyed my morning oatmeal! Yup, a very different Thanksgiving. Being so far away from the states and many people here not knowing about this holiday last Thursday was simply just last Thursday. Nothing special really happened. The turkeys over here weren't hiding for their lives and everyone still got up and went to work. It was like any other day and it was very difficult to believe it was Thanksgiving without Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. But, alas we did get our fill of a Thanksgiving feast surrounded by friends. It just ended up being on Sunday instead of Thursday.

In honor of Thanksgiving the other four volunteers and myself put together a feast of food for our supervisors and some of the amazing people that have helped us these past few months. My previous post tells the different dishes that were present and along with those we said a few prayers, shared what we typically do on Thanksgiving, and had fellowship. Here are a few of the highlights from the evening/prep:

• Car loaded and ready to head over to Doria and Michael's house. Where are the keys???? Why won't the trunk open??? All the food (including the uncooked turkey) are locked in with the keys in the back of the truck! I jimmy a window open and Erika climbs/falls halfway in looking for the keys.
• So, who's cooking the turkey? Oh yeah, the vegetarian is! (Gotta say my first Turkey ever didn't turn out that bad. Or so they said!) I'll try and add a whole picture of the done product as soon as I get it.
• Cooking all the dishes in oven 1/3 the size of an average on in the states.
• Trying to find all the ingredients and then having to improve or make things from scratch.
• "I was worried if they could cook!" said by one of our friends when she received our invitation and then saw us buying the ingredients
• "Only one meat dish!" Said by our host when we sent her our menu (almost every dish here has some sort of meat or fish in it.)
• Some expressed afterwards they were afraid they would still be hungry. That was not the case!
• The many thank yous for sharing this American holiday.

Overall, the Thanksgiving wasn't the same as past ones but it wasn't a bad one. It was fun to meet the people in the other volunteers lives and share a little of our American tradition and food with our new friends and family here.