Happy Thanksgiving

A week late, but nonetheless, happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

The actual day of Thanksgiving was like any other, but last weekend I got together with a number of other Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as a few South Africans and a doctor from the Congo. It proved to be quite a relaxing get together and a welcomed break from life in the village. I started out my Saturday by seeing a movie (Heartbreak Kid) at the nicer mall in Polokwane. It was a poor romantic comedy with Ben Stiller, but after having not seen a movie for quite some time, it was surprisingly entertaining. From there, we began meeting up with other Peace Corps volunteers from the surrounding area (a total of eleven of us), and spent the afternoon doing the final food preparations. In the end, we had two smaller turkeys (you can’t really find normal, big turkeys too easily here), gravy, green bean casserole, stuffing (delicious), butternut squash, mashed potatoes (nice and garlicky), rolls, and my own contribution of roast bell pepper tarts. The day before, I spent the whole afternoon working on my first real attempt at cooking here, but I managed to pull it off, spilling flour on the floor only a few times and baking everything in my little electric hotplate/oven combo. And, of course, for dessert, there was pumpkin pie, apple crumble and even some chocolate chip cookies. My, was I stuffed by the end!

The whole experience was quite positive and it was so nice to catch up with the other volunteers, as well as meet some new people. Tomorrow, I head off for phase 3 of the Peace Corps training, where all the volunteers in my program will get together and spend a week doing additional training and debriefing about our first two months at site.