Happy Thanksgiving

My experience in Ecuador is quickly drawing to a close.  Although I am definitely sad that it is all ending, these past few weeks of traveling on my own have made me miss home a bit.  It gets lonely passing through random towns for a few days at a time, and living out of a hotel eating out for every meal starts to get old after a while.  There's also just something about waking up, and heading to the pizza place for lunch on Thanksgiving that makes you miss home. 

My Thanksgiving actually took an unexpected turn after a rather uneventful morning/afternoon of paper writing and pizza eating, and I had probably the most legitimate Thanksgiving dinner possible outside of the US.  Kyle, the other kid staying in Loja with me, has been working in an environmental organization for his independent project, and there is a peace corp volunteer in his office.  The volunteer has been in Ecuador for almost 3 years, and so is an old pro at throwing American holidays.  He invited the both of us over for a Thanksgiving dinner, so Kyle and I celebrated the holiday with 8 peace corp volunteers who we just met.    We got to the apartment of one of the volunteers (it's in a building with lightning bolts and rocketships on the outside) and walked into a kitchen full of people cooking a whole lot of ...interesting concoctions.  When all was said and done, our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of turkey cutlets, stuffing, zucchini fritters, fruit salad, mashed potatoes, broccoli, cheese and bread, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, cupcakes made in a toaster oven, some sort of green filled pie that no one, not even the landlord's dog liked, flan from a french restaurant, apple cake, and margaritas.  The peace corp volunteers were stationed all over the place in southern Ecuador, and had gotten together for the holiday.  Some had only been here for a few months, while others had been here for nearly three years.  In real life, I'm pretty sure none of them would have been friends.  Everyone was definitely different- from the guy with suspenders, to the former girl ice hockey player, to the preppy amateur bartender- I was surprised that everyone got a long so well.  It's amazing how close you can get to people that are thrown into the same hard, unfamiliar situation as you.  It was definitely not the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but nonetheless, it was a good one.

Although I definitely missed the holiday at home, I had my turkey, I watched a bit of the Pats game (dubbed over in Spanish), and realized that I have a lot to be thankful for- both at home and here in Ecuador.