Thanksgiving Day

We celebrated Thanksgiving day here is in San Nicolas with a big dinner and invited some people from town over to share this day with us. We invited the school director, Idalia, and her family over, our adult English class, as well 2 Peace Corps volunteers. In total, we had 10 people sharing in our Thanksgiving feast.
The cooking and baking was a ton of work, but so worth it for the delicious taste and the sharing of our culture with our community here. It was especially enjoyable to go around the table and talk about what each person was thankful for.
If you would have been here, these are a few things you would have heard (In Spanish):

• Thankful for good health and an active body
• Thankful for family and friends
• Thankful for my English Teachers (that’s us!)
• Thankful for food and housing, when many people are not as fortunate to have the same.
• Thankful for family and community in the United States, but also a new and fun community here in Nicaragua.
• Thankful for the sharing of cultures and traditions.
• Thankful for food and friends.
• Thankful for each person around the table.
• Thankful for friends and families that will be able to visit during the holidays.

We then thoroughly enjoyed the menu of the night; Turkey, Mashed potatoes and gravy, dinner rolls, sweet potatoes, salad, stuffing, honey glazed carrots, and pumpkin and apple pie.. Yum! To say we were full is probably an understatement. In the end it was well worth the full day of cooking and I learned a ton about cooking, baking, and how gross it is to deal with a raw turkey

Here’s the 12 lb turkey before going in the oven. It turned out wonderfully and we had lots of leftovers—we just finished off some turkey noodle soup this week!

Mashed potatoes, of course!

First ever attempt at pumpkin pie with homemade crust…not too bad!

Our thankfulness white board and menu listed! By the end of the night it was filled with the things we are thankful for, in both Spanish and English.

Our table setting (thanks to MCC volunteer Ariane for the sweet table runner!)

Photo of the crew without kyle

Photo with Kyle. We had a full house (for our house!)

While it was hard to be away from home and family on this first major holiday, we loved sharing this tradition with our community here, and hope to continue the exchange of ideas and cultures. We are already learning so much from the community here, and hope they are able to learn from us, as well. We are so thankful for this experience and all of YOU who are supporting us from afar. Thank-you!!!