Our "chain of thankfullness"
If you look closely, you'll notice that cookies and ice cream made the list...
Our apartment all decorated!
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Good food, fun times!
For
Thanksgiving I was in charge of the pecan pie, which means I spent my Wednesday
night cracking about a billion pecans with my roommate. Now I know why my mom always took the pecans
we picked up at my Granny and Granddaddy's to the pecan-cracking place! We
cracked the pecans with the bottom of a cup and the handle of some scissors
(I'm really glad my aunt's recipe specified that the pecans should be in
pieces). At some point, I realized we had plenty of pecans for the pie, but
well, it was the end of our school week and we needed the stress relief...
The pie
turned out surprisingly good! I had to use a tarte shell instead of a pie crust
and because the shell is really thin, I layered two together. As it turns out,
this was a bad idea. Despite the many holes I poked in the crust to let steam
through it still blew up and spilled some of the juice out on the oven floor.
Cleaning hot sugar out of a hot oven on a 96 degree day is, well, a little
unpleasant. I moved the pie to my
neighbors' oven and went and popped the crust every fifteen minutes. To my
surprise, it still tasted really good, just very heavy on the pecans. :)
The indians came to visit!
(well, technically this is her house too, yup I live with this crazy person)
We also got
to have a turkey this Thanksgiving, a real treat in a country with no
turkeys...Want to know how to get really good turkey? Move to a country where
meat is a staple of the diet. That turkey may not have gone through some fancy
brining process or whatever people usually do to turkeys, but it was
AMAZING!!!! Since turkey is my favorite bird, this pretty much made my day. The
rest of the meal was awesome and I really enjoyed spending the day with
everybody. After the meal we watched a Christmas movie and played games. I even played some football! I still don't
see the point of it.
Yummyness!
I'm actually
kind of starting to get into a Christmassy spirit early this year. Usually I
wait until about two weeks till Christmas to listen to any Christmas music or
watch Christmas movies. This November,
the apartments are getting together each Saturday to watch a Christmas movie
together. It was kind of amusing the
first week since we all gathered together and realized noone actually had any
Christmas movies. We ended up watching The Holiday since it happens at
Christmas... Now we've watched White Christmas (I even enjoyed it this time),
and Miracle on 34th street, the new version.
It's fun to watch the movies together because you end up with 15 people
sprawled on couch cushions around a tiny living room and up the stairs. Since
the air is on inside the room, when you leave you go from a cool room feeling
like Christmas to 80 degree heat outside. It's kind of a weird contrast.
This Thanksgiving break has been full of other fun times, too (in addition to a great deal of sleeping in, just because I can). I got to go to my first, bi-lingual Paraguayan wedding. Such a beautiful wedding! I also got to wear my pretty new dress!
Katie and Katie (Pre-K and K) Just two of the three Katies!
Also, just tonight my roommate Jacqui and I got the scare of the week when a giant beetle flew into our dining room and refused to leave. We tried calling on our male neighbors, but unhelpfully, they were all either asleep or (the horror) working up at the school. So, we had to gather our courage and put a cup over it to take it outside. It just barely fit!
Do you SEE those Pinchers?????? Yeek!
I'm going to
miss being here in Paraguay, but I am excited to go home for Christmas in two
and a half weeks (I can't believe I've already been teaching for an entire
semester!). I'll have a long break, because it is the Paraguayan summer
break. I'm looking forward to seeing
everybody and getting a break from the heat!
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