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Día de Acción de Gracias

Thanksgiving invaded La Fila on Sunday when 8 of the 9 trainees in La Fila used our mad cooking skills to put together a fabulous (belated) Thanksgiving feast for our host families. We gathered at our friend Bryson’s house, where his host mom kindly donated her beautiful outdoor kitchen for the cause.

Our brave friends Barton and Bryson took charge of the turkeys (there were two!), stuffing, two kinds of gravy, biscuits and hot apple cider, and the rest of us brought dishes to compliment those. We had mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, cornbread dressing, improvised candied yams made from a similar local tuber, green bean casserole, roasted vegetables, improvised collard greens made instead with cooked cauliflower leaves, salad, and an amazing improvised pumpkin pie made out of a delicious local squash called ayote. It was quite the feast! I think everyone was impressed and really enjoyed the food. The best part is that we had tons of leftovers so we met for lunch again today to finish them up. Yum.

Attendance was awesome - there were probably 25 of us total. We crowded around a couple long tables in the open-air eating area. After everyone had sufficiently gorged themselves, the tables were cleared out of the way to make room for dancing! This was truly unlike any Thanksgiving any of us have ever experienced. There was lots of dancing, limbo, and even some incredibly dirty dancing by the children with the use of a broom handle (use your imagination)! All in all, our Thanksgiving celebration was a huge success. We feel so fortunate to live with such a fun group of trainees!

Kevin and I are both very grateful for our wonderful Costa Rican family, fellow Peace Corps friends and all of our loved ones at home. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Comments

Unknown said…
We missed you dearly for Thanksgiving at home, and talked about you guys quite a lot. and Kevin, you should be happy to know that Quinn tried to carry on your teaching of Jacob to scream, when he does his screaming thing, to sound more like a man than a woman. ha ha.
December 2, 2010 at 10:49 AM
Unknown said…
This sounds so lovely!! It looks like you two are having a wonderful time!
December 2, 2010 at 2:04 PM
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