A Very Different Thanksgiving- Part 2

The sun was close to setting and I was getting tired.  I wanted to sit down, but something about the black sand of the beach made me more wary of that than I usually am. Suddenly, a large line of people emerged from a gate at the edge of the beach.  As they made their way down to the shore, I noticed two women with large tubs and a group quickly gathering around.  The turtles had arrived.  I hurried over and peeked over the heads of the children crowding close and squealed with the “aww” factor of dozens of tiny baby sea turtles, all clamoring to get out and start their journey to the ocean.

“Step back behind the line”, the volunteers instructed us, shepherding us to a line that had been drawn in the sand. They walked the line in trios, one person taking our 10 quetzales (about $1.30) and giving us a ticket, the next person handing us a little plastic bowl and depositing a diminutive turtle from the tub the last person was holding.

I stared at my turtle in delight.  It was so tiny, so full of life, so anxious to go.  It tried to crawl it’s way up the edge of the bowl, so I covered it with my hand, afraid it would flop out and fall to the sand. Once everyone had gotten a turtle, they counted to 3 and we all released our turtles at once as the sun sank below the horizon.  Their little flippers moving madly, they stumbled their way toward the ocean, 3 strokes forward, pause, 3 strokes forward, pause. They were so tiny that footprints left in the sand were obstacles that had to be carefully maneuvered. We cheered them on, urging them to the sea, to survive, to be quick and wary.

As the waves rolled in, little turtles would disappear from the sand, bobbing out to sea.  Others, the stragglers in the group, wandered haphazardly, heading down the beach before veering back towards the ocean.  Finally, as it grew darker and the grey turtles blended in with the sand, the last of the turtles finally made it out to sea. My heart was full- thankful for this amazing and unusual Thanksgiving experience.

A Very Different Thanksgiving- part 1

It’s Thanksgiving morning, but I’m not cooking a turkey or making a pie.  Instead, I’m headed up the mountain to the next town over- Sololá, the capital of the department (Guatemala’s version of States) that I live in.  We have a meeting with the director of the Department of Education and the supervisors of every school district we are currently working in.

I look around, fascinated, as we walk in.  It’s my first time at the offices, and it’s so far from my imagination of what the department of education would look like back home.  It’s a cement block structure, just as all the schools I’ve visited, and the waiting room we’re in has high ceilings and is cold this morning. The walls are painted, but the cement blocks below are still visible and the lighting is poor.  A stream of people arriving for work greets us as they walk past.  Eventually we’re lead upstairs to a large conference room, an overhead projector already turned on and the power point for the meeting after ours on the screen.  There’s a pretty tile floor pattern and tables set up in a large U.  We talk to the sub-director of the department of education as we wait, as supervisors begin to file in.

This meeting is the culmination of months of effort on the part of one of my coworkers. We’re here to sign a letter of understanding between us and the department of education.  It gives us their backing to work in schools in the districts of this department.  The department director reads the letter aloud, outlining the departments responsibilities and our responsibilities, and then, with all the supervisors we work with looking on, our Director of Programs and the director of the department of education sign and seal a letter for each supervisor as I take photos.  By the end, all the district supervisors in the department have arrived for their end of the year meeting.  We get a photo with all of them.  It’s a historic moment for us, and we’re really excited to have backing at this level of government for the work we do.

Work for the week done for me and my one American coworker, we head back down the mountain for a celebratory breakfast of eggs, black beans, plantains and tortillas, before we leave for our Thanksgiving holiday.

Split Pea Pie

“I’ll make a pumpkin pie and an apple pie”, I said. How hard could it be, really?  I’d just bought something that was smaller, greener, harder shelled, and more ridged than a pumpkin at the market the week before, and it was remarkably pumpkin like inside.

Sundays are market days, and the streets were overflowing with vendors. I walked down a crowded lane, fruit displays, papaya, pineapple, granadillas, strawberries, and some fruits I couldn’t even identify forming haphazard towers.  I restacked an orange I’d knocked to the ground as I brushed past and headed past vegetables: tomatoes, red peppers, onions, eggplants and broccoli. I wasn’t noticing any pumpkin-like squash. I headed into the covered market, made a detour to one of the stalls in the back that sells candles and then zig-zagged through past kitchen goods, dried peppers, cheap clothes, fresh fish and more vegetables.  Still no sign of pumpkins.

Outside, and close to giving up, I finally spotted something that looked like a cross between a butternut squash and a watermelon. It just might do the trick. “What color is it inside?” I asked the lady selling it. “Black”, she answered off-handedly. “Black?!”  I asked, surprise in my voice, as my mind mentally cataloged every vegetable dish I’ve ever been served at Guatemalan restaurants and failing to bring a single black squash to mind. But, she continued to insist that it was black, and when I told her I was looking for one that was orange inside and asked if she had any, she pulled another odd shaped winter squash from under some lettuce and presented it to me.  It looked pretty much like the other. “It might be black, it might be orange,” she shrugged, then nicked the outside skin, revealing some pale orange flesh underneath.

I took my pumpkin substitute home and tried to hack it open with my kitchen knife.  When it finally split, I looked at it in consternation.  Blackish green goop and dark greyish green flesh were what the inner layer looked like, only the very outside of the squash was orange at all.  But, I had a pie to make, so I cut it into pieces and stuck it on the stove to boil. 

As I scooped the softened flesh from the shell to make puree I almost stopped the experiment then.  The green vastly overwhelmed the orange and this was going to be the strangest “pumpkin” pie ever.  But, I had just spent an hour buying it, hacking it apart, and boilng it til it was soft enough, and it smelled and tasted pumpkiny enough so I threw it into the blender, and continued my recipe anyway.

Several hours later, my no bake, pea-soup “pumpkin” pie was chilled and ready to go.  And green notwithstanding, I’m thankful that a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg go a long way towards transforming a mystery squash into a very tasty and almost convincing “pumpkin” pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Back in September, I was already starting to think about Thanksgiving.  Not celebrating Thanksgiving just wasn't an option, but singlehandedly hosting Thanksgiving dinner when I've never made a turkey before was a daunting task.  So when Alistair was just as excited by Thanksgiving as I was, we had a team and a goal- introducing one of our favorite holidays to friends from around the world.

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is a big deal.  It's even more of a big deal in a foreign country where it can be tricky to find the ingredients you need.  Add to that living in student apartments without the space to host a large dinner and no car for transporting groceries, and you have a logistical puzzle.  But, where there's a will, there's a way.

A scouting trip to the closet major grocery store near my house revealed that turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce could remain on the menu, as long as we were willing to make them from scratch.  Watergate salad (or what we call "green stuff" in my family) was a no go however.

An early Happy Thanksgiving email to my family on Thursday morning prompted me to look at how long I'd need to defrost our bird in the fridge if we were celebrating on Sunday.  I suddenly realized that the answer was I should start defrosting it now.  So, after my first class of the day I biked to the store and bought a 17 pound turkey.  While I've gotten better at balancing my bike with packages hanging from the handlebars, I don't think I'm up to the disequilibrium that something that heavy would cause, so lucky for me, the turkey just fit into my backpack.

Next on the to-do list was finding a venue.  Fortunately for us, all the student apartment complexes have "common rooms" that you can reserve.  So Alistair reserved a room and I swung by the student housing office on Friday afternoon to pick up the key.  When I got home Friday evening, I decided to stop in and scope out the room.  Much to my dismay, the key I was given didn't open the door.  I tried again.  I've been known to be slightly key-challenged, so maybe I was just doing something wrong?  Nothing.  Suddenly our whole plan seemed to be crashing in around me.  We had 17 people scheduled to show up on Sunday and it looked like we might not have a room.  I was imagining us sitting on the floor of my apartment, eating out of paper plates.  Not really the best Thanksgiving dinner scenario.

Since I was biking (again) on Friday and had bought poster board downtown, I'd asked a friend who happens to be a neighbor if he'd take it back with him on the bus.  So, when I called him to get the poster board from him I asked if he'd see if he had any more luck with the key than I did.  He didn't.  I realized that maybe the lady at the housing office had given me the wrong key, so we went off to see if we could find the other common room in the complex.  The exterior door there was open, and the housing office key let us into the common room.  My immediate relief was followed by disappointment.  The room was ugly, windowless, with a broken down pool table on the floor and not enough chairs to seat everyone.  To make it worse, the kitchen was also locked, and, you guessed it, the key didn't work to open it.

As I was mentally trying to come up with plan C, some random inspiration made my friend try his key in the kitchen door.  It opened.  Thoroughly confused, but glad at least to have access to a kitchen on the premises, I figured the rest of the details would work themselves out.  Another random moment of inspiration led us back to the first room where my friend's key worked on the outside door and the key from the housing office worked on the inside door and voila, we finally had a (somewhat) better place.  At least there was enough seating and no broken pool table.

Prepping sweet potato casserole on Saturday 

So, Saturday back at my place, Alistair and I, with the help of our friend Paulina, made all the desserts and prepped some of the other food.  And Sunday morning, at the early hour of 7 am (made even earlier by the fact the sun doesn't even rise til 9:30 here right now) Alistair showed up and (using my friend's borrowed key) we let ourselves in to the common room and started cooking away.

Necessity is the mother of invention

The turkey came out perfect.  An olive oil bottle worked just fine for mashing potatoes since we didn't have a potato masher.  My cranberry sauce gelled.  In short, all the disasters that could have happened didn't.  Thanksgiving was an amazing success.  None of our guests had celebrated an American Thanksgiving before and almost none of them had eaten a whole turkey.  They all waited anxiously for it to come out of the oven.

The two American co-hosts and our perfect turkey

As we shared about our American traditions and history- pumpkin pie and breaking wishbones, the Macy's day parade and football, Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians- it was so fun to see people experiencing Thanksgiving for the first time.  We went around the table and all shared one thing we were thankful for.

Guests from around the world experiencing their first American dinner (in Finland).

For me, I was thankful for friends.  Thankful that despite being far from home and family, I was surrounded by people who I could share Thanksgiving with.  That's what I said.  I was also thankful for this plate of food and pulling off Thanksgiving without a single mishap.

Of course, Thanksgiving dinner isn't complete without dessert.  "Let me put this in perspective" I told our guests.  "This year at home, there were only 8 people at my family's Thanksgiving celebration, and I think they had 4 different desserts.  This is the one day a year when you can eat as much dessert as you want and not feel guilty.  Please, try everything.  We want you to."  Alistair and I weren't sure if our 2 apple pies, 2 pumpkin pies, 1 chocolate mousse pie, brownies, and ice cream was going a bit overboard.  But hey, there's no such thing as too much food at Thanksgiving.  

An apple pie and a chocolate mousse pie, made by me with some help from Paulina

Some of my favorite people in Finland.  :)

Now the leftovers are mostly eaten, other than some turkey soup that is saved in my freezer.  And I'm looking forward to next year's Thanksgiving, but not sure who I'll host it with since Alistair won't be here next year.  Any American friends want to come host Thanksgiving with me next year?