Anne in Brazil

Surprisingly, I had a great Thanksgiving this year. I'd originally planned to share a little, 6-personish meal with a few of the other American students, but it turned into something beyond my wildest imagination. Of course, so much of Thanksgiving is the preparation process itself, which in this case is almost more interesting than the actual meal. I'd put myself in charge of fruit salad, so early Thursday morning Darlan and I went to the biggest market in town to buy fruit. I love the market - picture guys next to mountains of mangoes or papaya or guavas or fruit that only exists in Brazil yelling to you that their prices are better than their neighbors'. Three hours later, we emerged, filthy and drenched in sweat, along with two enormous sacks of fruit (I gave one to him), only about $3 US poorer. It was an adventure to take the bus all the way home with this monstrosity but I made it.

I had purposely only just told my host mother that morning that I was going to the market so she wouldn't be able to take over the task in any way (she has a tendency to do this). She was pretty surprised/impressed/amused with my sweaty self when I came home with my Santa Claus-sized bag of fruit and started cutting things up.

I had a feeling dinner would be bigger than planned, hence the quantity of fruit that I'd bought. And it was delicious, probably the best fruit I've ever tasted, even here (where my standards have significantly increased). I finished making my bowl and anxiously awaited our dinner.

That evening I went to my friend April's house, where the dinner was being held. It turned out that about 3 times more people were coming than I'd expected, but miraculously we had enough food to feed everyone. Several of the kids had brought Brazilian friends or their host mothers, and it was hilarious to watch these people examine the food carefully, with these great what-the-hell-is-this-cranberry-sause-crap expressions on their brows.

So Thanksgiving was just as it ought to be - too many people and too much food (and no family arguments!) - and yet with the twist of being so far away from home, with people we didn't know 5 months ago, and with limited Thanksgiving cooking resources. We gave thanks for being here among newly-made friends and for having made it thus far. I feel like only now, practically at the six-month mark, am I really and truly beginning to feel comfortable here, and I'm so glad I'm going to be staying on for another six months. I'm also rather pleased that after allowing ourselves to be so vulnerable and open to learning new things here, we were able to teach our Brazilian counterparts about what is in my opinion one of the most enjoyable, or at least familiar, American traditions.

ALSO: I realize that you need to see photos. I am way behind on this. Unfortunately, Blogspot won't let me update my account to include photo hosting, so I have begun to set up a little album on yahoo. You can access it by going to http://photos.yahoo.com/arouss13. I will keep adding to it so check back often.