Thanksgiving X 3

That's right. Even thought it isn't an official holiday in the DR, we got to celebrate it three separate times. Once at school, once with a student's family, and once on our own. You will be brought the details in 2 installments. I will begin, and Amy will finish.

Wednesday was Thanksgiving at school. The first time the school has ever celebrated it. It was huge. The whole school, 1-12, sat down all together and ate a giant meal that the high schoolers organized. It wasn't the traditional meal, but that doesn't mean it was bad. There were at least 4 or 5 different kinds of rice, turkey, chicken, pork, a ton of different salads (pasta, lettuce, potato, fruit, everything), and these Dominican casseroles they call pastelones. It took most of the afternoon to get all of the kids down there, get them their food, and get them dessert, but everyone really enjoyed it. There was also a nice presentation a few students gave right before the meal to give a little of the historical importance of the holiday. It was very successful and will probably become an annual event.

Thursday was the actual day of Thanksgiving. After a half day at school to finish writing our final exams, we were picked up by one the student's fathers and all of the American teachers celebrated the meal at their house. Amy will fill you in on this. Pictures of the house coming soon.

Today, Sunday, saw mine and Amy's first solo Thanksgiving. We tried to duplicate a real American meal as closely as we could. The only thing that was missing was the pie. We couldn't find pumpkin anywhere. But we bought some turkey, not a whole one, we were able to buy a few slices. Yes. The supermarket sells slices of a whole turkey. I don't know how you go about slicing up a turkey, but we got three slices of a turkey. Potatoes were easy, and we found fresh green beans. We settled for stove-top stuffing (but it was good, instead of just adding water, we used the turkey marinade), and bought a can of jellied cranberry sauce. The tricky one was sweet potatoes. We couldn't find them in the store, and we knew they have them here. We finally found them, and if you look at the pictures, you'll see why we didn't notice them. They're more than a little different than our orange potatoes. It all went really smoothly and was quite delicious. The only bust was the dessert. We tried making Tres Leches cake instead of pie, but the recipe we found is no good. You're supposed to make the cake and then dump a bunch of this milk mixture on top, so it's actually soggy when you eat it. It's usually very good. But not this one. The cake was so dense, it wouldn't soak anything up. It sat and sat in the milk mixture, and not one drop of it got inside. We tried eating it, but it was like eating a really heavy bread. Those of you coming for Christmas, don't worry. We're looking for a new recipe.

I'm uploading pictures of our Thanksgiving adventure as I write this. There are also beach pictures, egg salad pictures, and pictures of the house we were at for real Thanksgiving on the way. Probably shortly after December 1st when my Flickr limit is refreshed.