Thanksgiving 2010

Last Thursday in celebration of Thanksgiving, I joined 10 other Americans at the home of another volunteer in San Vicente Buenabaj, a rural aldea in Totonicapán about two and a half hours from where I live.  We arrived as it was beginning to rain and were able to enjoy a 15 minute hike uphill in the mud.  It was wonderful to arrive.  Everybody contributed something and we had the most amazing Thanksgiving spread: turkey (freshly killed by our hosts the day before), stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, cauliflower and cheese, bean dip, deviled eggs, yam pudding, rice pudding, apple cake, apple pie, pumpkin bread, fudge, brownies, pie tins of jello shots, and bread.  I made sweet potato pound cake and a cucumber, tomato, avocado salad.  We ate til we were more than full and only made a dent in the massive amounts of food we had.  Somehow one of the dogs got to the rest of the turkey in the middle of the night, but the rest of the food served as breakfast and lunch the next day.  We also had a piñata that no one had the energy to break open the night before, so we did it in the morning which also gave us some candy to snack on.

Overall it was a really special Thanksgiving.  While a little sad for most of us to be spending Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. away from family, it was nice to have a traditional meal with good friends.  We all said what we are thankful for and made a special Thanksgiving shout-out video to our fellow PCV Dirk who will be re-joining us in Guatemala in January.