Thanksgiving and Election Day

Well, happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed the family time, the yummy eats, and the football. My Thanksgiving here wasn't all that different, only my family were other Peace Corps volunteers, and the American football games had announcers in Spanish. But at least the Peace Corps house in Santa Rosa, where we celebrated, gets good cable with Fox Sports and ESPN, so the boys and some of us girls were content. I went into Santa Rosa on Tuesday early because one of the PC doctors was in town giving flu vaccines. She also brought me lots of goodies (i.e. cough drops, nasal spray, advil, tampons, decongestant, bandaids and anything else I asked for) and refilled our prescriptions. Afterwards I hung out in the house and rested up for what I knew would be a full couple of days. On Wednesday with my friend Paul, we looked up some recipies (although I had enough from my mom) and made shopping lists and went to the grocery store and the big indoor vegetable and fruit market. There's no experience quite like roaming these markets looking for delectable produce, interacting with the vendors, and bartering over prices. I managed to find a variety of sweet potatoes there for my mom's famous Sweet Potato Casserole recipe, a fresh ripe pineapple, and bananas for my banana cream pie, and we also got potatoes, green peppers, onions, garlic, cheeses, tomatoes, and anything else we needed for our recipes. Then we lugged our shopping bags to the more modern shopping alternative, the grocery store. There I bought tin pans for cooking, cherry pie filling, flour, sugar, margerine, crisco, milk, whipped cream and whipping cream (miracle finds in our opinion), and a few bottles of wine. By this point it was almost noon and I was already beat. But we found a taxi because we couldn't carry it all home, and almost right away I took advantage of the empty oven and started the sweet potato casserole. The sweet potatoes here are different, and yellow on the inside, but they taste and smell the same. Then I made space for others to make their dishes. Yummy smells filled the house all day. In the evening with my friend Karen I made 5 pies - 3 pumpkin, one cherry, and one banana cream. Everyone was dying to start in on the pies but I held them off. Meanwhile the live turkey ("Sparky") my friend Eric had brought was being prepared for the kill. They bought a bottle of liquor to pour down the pour things throat so that it got drunk. The guys were loving this, and the girls were mostly trying not to see. Then they took it outside, chopped the head off, and carried it up to one of the showers where they hung it and later cleaned it out and defeathered it. Quite an experience for them all I am sure. The other turkey was storebought in San Pedro luckily. We all cooked until about midnight. Thanksgiving Day was great. We got up early to season, stuff, and put the turkeys in the ovens. People started showing up. Eric brought out his layer bean dip, we put out veggie trays and dip, and little sandwiches. The football was turned out and the beers started on. Lots of great conversation. Dinner was amazing. Both turkeys were delicious and we ate around 4 pm. We had all the essential dishes: 3 different stuffing recipes, sweet potatoes, homemade scalloped potatoes, cornbread, rolls, waldorf salad, pasta salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, an awesome wild rice quiche, and much more that I am probably forgetting. There were about 7 pies for dessert and brownies, and we made some of the famous delicious Honduran coffee. All in all between 25 and 30 volunteers showed up. I got phone calls from home from Chris and my family. We made some plates for our landlord who had loaned his stove so they could try some of our typical delicacies. Afterwards the beer and wine continued to be drunk and some of the guys lit up some of the world-famous Honduran cigars (best after Cuba) they had bought for the occasion. There was much contentment in the house that day. Somehow that night I was convinced to go out dancing with some friends and we had a great time workin off some of that turkey dinner to reggaeton music and merengue. All in all a great Thanksgiving! I was exhausted though :)

I got back to my town yesterday, Saturday. I stayed in Santa Rosa longer than expected to hang out with some friends visiting from Yoro, Karen and Bryon. We did some shopping, made an amazing turkey soup with the leftovers, and rented lots of movies to watch (Batman Begins, Aviator, the Longest Yard, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and others).

Today Sunday is Election day. Almost all of my friends are helping in some way with the polls. The voting ends at 4 pm and tonight sometime we will know the outcome. Not only the president is up for change, but also the mayors, which affect us a lot more. I spent the morning washing some clothes, cleaning up the house a bit, and reading another good book. One thing Peace Corps is great for is catching up on your reading. Volunteers are constantly passing books around and the 4 big rooms of the Santa Rosa house is full of bookshelves filled with books of any type.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading about my holiday. I feel really lucky they I have so many great friends to spend this time of year with. This year we got to mix old traditions and make new ones, which was really fun. Take care everyone and hope to hear from you soon!