Turkey Day

I don’t know when it happened, but Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday of the year. It is not that my family is full of tradition or that it is a feast with a table bursting with people, but I just love all that it represents. I am sure the purists will say that Thanksgiving is nothing more than an imperialistic holiday representing the conquest of America and blah blah blah… Sure, Thanksgiving is mostly founded upon lies, but what beautiful lies they are. Like all holidays they adapt with the times and become what we need most. For me Thanksgiving is a way for me to recall my home and be proud of my country. I use Thanksgiving to think of all I am fortunate for and lucky enough to have experienced in my life. My family may not have traditions passed on from generation to generation, but I will always think of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant or “It’s Thanksgiving in Manchester”.

This year I have added a few new traditions for the holiday. This was my third Thanksgiving away from home and probably the most meaningful for me. I have been in Nicaragua for over a year and I now see San Dionisio as my second home. I don’t know when it happened, but I feel perfectly comfortable in Nicaragua. I have grown accustomed to the culture and I embrace it. I am no longer counting down the days until the end of my service or even coming back to the United States, why do I need to be in a rush to come home when I already feel home? Anyways, this year I celebrated Thanksgiving at another volunteer’s house with 6 other volunteers. I took on the head chef role and I will spill the beans now… the turkey was delicious. I made maple sugar brine that the turkey sat in overnight and then I later made a maple glaze to put on while it cooked. I borrowed a tradition from my friend Angus and we coated the turkey in about 2lbs of bacon. I put the turkey in around 8am and it wasn’t ready until 6pm, but it was well worth the wait. Each of us brought different dishes and it was fun crowding the kitchen and cooking together. What more could you ask for by sharing a day together with your closest friends?

 Maybe this is known as growing-up, but I feel myself changing. I feel like I am making friends that will be with me for the rest of my life and what’s better is that we share so much in common. I am no longer the outlier who likes to travel or give back to my community. I have found my niche where there are many more like me and I couldn’t be happier. One prime example is that we went for a run on Thanksgiving morning. It wasn’t your normal run, for some reason we all had to run shirtless and to top it off we chanted the entire time. As a warm-up we all woke up to James Brown’s famous grunts and “hit me”. Well that groove stayed with us and on our 10k run we kept up funky beats, military chants, the national anthem, and any other patriotic songs that came to mind. After we successfully freaked out the entire community of Esquipulas we came back to the house for a game of Risk. Yes, I have found people who like to play Risk and the best part is that I win. What could be more fitting than a game of world domination on Thanksgiving?

He is... the most interesting man in the world.

After this Thanksgiving I can better relate to everything I am grateful for. I have been fortunate enough to make many new friends that will stay with me for the rest of my life. They have been with me through some of the hardest times and now some of my finest. I loved taking on the responsibility of cooking and can’t wait to cook again for my homecoming Thanksgiving dinner next year.

 Angus

 Elvis 

 Geory

 Icia

 Joanna

John