Thankful

This holiday, there are many things for which I'm thankful. I am thankful for good friends in Addis Ababa, who graciously invited me and two other Peace Corps Volunteers to join them and others in the mission and American expat community in Addis to celebrate Thanksgiving in style.  There were about twenty people from USAID and the international school bringing pies and side dishes and even a whole turkey.  Along with Jenny and myself, I invited my friend Kat, and two other G8 volunteers had been adopted by another USAID couple and brought to the meal.  The spread was pretty impressive, and way better than even the Hilton was last year.  Here's my plate:

On that plate you will see mashed potatoes with gravy, pureed carrots, cranberries, turkey, corn casserole, green beans, two kinds of stuffing (one that came with the bird, and a sausage one I helped to make) and burried under the corn casserole is actually some salad, too.

Before the big dinner, Jenny and I helped our hosts prepare some dishes to bring to the dinner.  The corn casserole, sausage stuffing, and cranberries were our hosts' contribution.  As mentioned, I helped with the stuffing, whereas Jenny helped with the corn casserole.  But we both helped to prepare the pies (not shown).  I brought up a pumpkin leftover from Halloween to gut and dice for pie myself.  Jenny and I prepared the pie crusts for all of the pies (two pecans and four pumpkins) and then made the filling for our special, from-scratch pumpkin pie.  We had so much extra filling that Kaaren let us use one of her pre-made crusts that she didn't want and we made a seventh pie, which we dropped a few chocolate chips into just for fun.  Here are our two pies made from a real pumpkin, depicted below:

In case it's not obvious, the one on the left was our homemade everything-from-scratch (pie crust and filling), whereas the one on the left is on the filling from scratch with a shortbread crust and chocolate chips.  They're a little green because pumpkins here are actually orange and green, and the one I made this one from was all green.  But it still tasted delicious.

After the huge dinner where I ate so much I gave myself a very happy stomach ache, we sat down and watched the Macy's Day Parade on AFN.  Here's Ronald McDonald:

I am so grateful that I was able to spend this holiday in a very American atmosphere with home-cooked American food and good friends.  But what I'm even more grateful for is the event that preceded this wonderful holiday, and that was the books I had received from the post office on Tuesday.  I got six packages of twenty-one books, two of which came with really sweet notes from Annie and Lori L.  Check out this spread:

I now have two copies of Yertle the Turtle, the Talking Eggs, and the Very Hungry Cattepiller (all seen) in addition to two copies of the Sneetches (one in English AND Mandarin, too, that was... interesting), the Z Was Zapped, the Giving Tree, and the Snail and the Whale.  And before you're all "Oh noes, she has two of the same!" it's actually a blessing, because this way I can give copies to the library, or to the college, or... I'll find uses for them, never you fear!

While I will get great use out of all of these books (I'm reading "Fish is Fish" next week), the treasures of my collection so far are A Perfect Orange (donated last time) and The Lion's Whiskers (illustrated version) because they are beautifully illustrated Ethiopian folktales that students can relate to.  Here are some of the really cool images in "The Lion's Whiskers":

 


How cool are those collages?  Beautiful!  I love all of these books and I know the kids will, too.  And I have some more photos from my Lorax read-aloud, which I will share with you all and take some more of fish is fish so you know that your books are being used.

Anyways, this Thanksgiving, I am so grateful for all of you and your support of my service, whether you donated books to my program, shared my program with friends on Facebook, follow my blog, comment on my blog/statuses/photos, or even just like my posts on Facebook, I am truly grateful for all of you back home and everything you do to support my work with students and teachers in Hossana.

Thank you all and happy holidays, whatever they may be.  Especially Hanukkah.  I heard Matt Lauer say that Hanukkah won't share a day with Thanksgiving for seventy-five thousand years, which I thought was weird because the first day of Hanukkah fell on Thanksgiving in 1888, so I was wondering why that was, but then The Huffington Post explained it pretty well.  It's a bit complicated, but it's kinda cool to know that this will more or less never happen again.

So yes, I am grateful for all of that, and the fact that my landlord installed a water heater on my shower.  That's a big one, too. ;)