Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays! Last November 2010, for my first Thanksgiving outside of the good ol’ US of A, I was determined to celebrate one of my favorite holidays abroad. Thankfully I had some interested students at school, and friends and roommates who were eager to share the awesomeness of Thanksgiving with our international friends.
For school, I did some simple Thanksgiving lessons where I taught a very SIMPLE romanticized version of Thanksgiving to my students. Amazingly, my school had some adorable Thanksgiving decorations (look at the adorable pilgrims below) from previous American language assistants.
For a small project, I had the kids color pictures of turkeys, and on each of the turkeys’ feathers, I had them write what they were thankful for. It did make me feel warm and fuzzy inside when many of them wrote my name on a feather!
I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving dinner, who doesn’t? For those of you who have never had a Thanksgiving meal, I hope you are able to one day, because you are really missing out!
My old roommates and I decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner party at our piso. We didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into, and over 25 people ended up coming!
We didn’t have a turkey… we tried to find one, but they were unbelievably expensive, as Spaniards generally only prepare turkeys for Christmas. But we had a fabulous meal nonetheless. With the help of some imported American ingredients, we had an impressive spread of meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy, cream of corn, 2 types of stuffing, 3 chickens, cranberry sauce, buckeye peanut butter chocolates (basically like Reese’s peanut butter cups, which sadly don’t exist in Spain), home-made pumpkin pies, rice krispie treats, chocolate turrón and starbursts.
We had a lot of different guests, many of whom were not American, some didn’t know English, and they had never celebrated Thanksgiving before. They absolutely loved it, and we were thrilled to be able to share one of the best American holidays with others!
P.S. To mix things up a bit, here’s a little update on my life in real-time during my vacation back home in California: Today is my good friend Tiffany’s birthday, Happy Birthday! And tonight we’re going to the Hollywood Bowl to see the John Williams orchestra concert! So stoked
One Response to “A delicious Thanksgiving in Madrid”
That Thanksgiving was so memorable! and delicious!