This year, Thanksgiving was a Thanksgiving filled with doubts. My roommates and I were thousands of miles away from our homes where we have been celebrating Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving traditions for years. We were all missing out on mom's pumpkin desserts, delicious homemade gravy, TURKEY, family time, AND we had to cook for ourselves! Not our Moms and our Aunts...US...alone...in the kitchen...preparing Thanksgiving! But we had to celebrate. Although we are living in Spain, we are Americans through and through and the last thing we were going to do was sit around and have grilled cheese for dinner. After determining that this day was going to be a little different, we decided to start the hunt for ingredients.
Rumor had it that a store called VIPS which is about a 15 minute walk from my apartment had marshmallows. When I got there, I found them tucked away on one of the shelves with a slogan on them that said, "America's Favorite Treat." I was never so happy to see them but never in my life did I think I would be paying 4 euros ($5.50) for marshmallows! Next came the hunt for spices like nutmeg and cinnamon as well as other ingredients for our dinner. I was all ready to buy the Spanish version of Cream of Mushroom Soup (Sopa de Crema de Cetas del Bosque) until my roommate yelled out in the middle of El Corte Ingles (the famous Spanish department store that has a super market on the first floor with many American foods)...BRIDGET, THEY HAVE CAMPBELL'S CREAM OF MUSHROOM! I was pumped. After paying 4 euro for two cans of that which would have originally been about $0.80 in any American grocery store, I decided that we could easily turn this Thanksgiving around.
Since my roommates and I have work until Thursday, we decided we would make our Thanksgiving meal on Friday since we have off. We would also have Thanksgiving for lunch since lunch is the big meal here instead of dinner. So the preparations began. We began cooking around 11 am for a 3 pm meal. The menu included:
Chicken
Chicken gravy
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet potato casserole
Green bean casserole
Honey glazed carrots
Garlic broccoli
Deviled eggs (because my roommate Kathleen always has them in her house for an appetizer)
Bread
Wine
Brownies for dessert
There we were in a kitchen as narrow as an upstairs hallway with about 5 feet of counter space total for all of this preparation. We filled the kitchen with all of our ingredients as we put on our Christmas song playlists on iTunes. And we began. We mashed the sweet potatoes with a pestel (yes as in morder and pestel...yes we were living in the stone age on Friday) since we did not have an electric mixer. We used so many ingredient substitutes and held our breath with every casserole that went into the oven hoping it would turn out alright.
Let's just say we were all more than pleased with the way the meal turned out. The first day was our roommate meal and the next day we introduced Thanksgiving dinner to some of our Spanish friends. They were confused by the whole let's put all of the same food on the same plate and go back for second and third servings. But they loved it. They were amazed by the concept of gravy and marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes and all of the preparation that went into one meal. In the end, we had a very successful weekend of Thanksgiving madness.
After reflecting on the weekend, I realized I have a lot to give thanks for. I have my wonderful family and extended family who helped me begin my journey through "Teach in Spain" by providing me with the support I needed to come to Europe and live a healthy and happy life here. I have my friends both in the United States who constantly assure me that I am never alone in this experience. I have a boyfriend in Hawaii who makes me happy from 7,000 miles away and makes a long distance relationship as easy and painless as they come. And as I looked around the Thanksgiving table, I looked at my roommates and my friends both Spanish and American and I realized I am lucky to have them as well as the the people who I work with at my school and my new students. Each one of them has been put in my life for a reason, and I feel so blessed and lucky to have all of them in my life right now.
After rereading the paragraph above, I realize that despite the very high highs and the very low lows of this experience, I have a lot to be thankful for. What more could a girl want?
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