Chelsea: Thanksgiving in Quito

I spent this weekend at “home” in Quito with my family – all in all, it was a fantastic weekend and just what I needed

On Thursday, our school held a Thanksgiving celebration for all of the students here. It wasn’t quite the same – but it was a nice thought and a great time to reunite with friends. It was held in a nice banquet room and everyone brought a dish to share! I attempted to make apple crisp, and despite a few different ingredients, it surprisingly turned out better than expected! Right after eating a lot (mashed potatoes and turkey!!! …and some not-so-traditional Thanksgiving food), the music started and I was grabbed to dance as I was still chewing dessert! Quite the change from the sweatpants and football game. So, we danced the night away and had a lot of fun!

The Thanksgiving feast!

My family definitely rocking the dance floor

The next morning there was a band competition between the neighborhoods here, that of course started at 5am right behind my house! A little later, at a normal hour, I went with my aunts and the kids from the daycare to go watch! It was a lot of fun, especially dancing with the little kids – adorable And, our band won so we were even on the news that afternoon!

Also, later that night around 8:00, there was an Earthquake in Quito! It happened about 45 minutes from us and was magnitude 4…and I definitely felt it! My whole house shook for almost a minute – such a weird feeling!

Yesterday, I attended a “school program” for my brother Pablo. I was expecting a meeting at the school…and that was definitely wrong. We went to one of the students’ houses and basically had a party! We all danced (even the YMCA), played some intense musical chairs (where you eliminate chairs, but just sit on other people), tug of war (with a pool in the middle), and more dancing! So much for just the afternoon – we were there for about 7 hours (1 of which was the actual “meeting” of the parents between dances)

…musical chairs

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend here at home in Quito. Now, I’m heading back to Latacunga for my last week of my internship and on Friday, I’ll be back in Quito for my last week of the program! I absolutely cannot believe I will be home in just 3 weeks – this semester has flown by so fast! I’m excited to see family & friends and be home for the holidays…but I’m definitely not ready to leave Ecuador nor return to reality…

Chiyo: Turkey Day in London

Unlike everyone else back in the states who is on Thanksgiving Break, my life stayed the same here in London since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Although we don’t get off school or internships, I can’t really complain considering we had a 10 day Fall Break at the end of October, so it’s a fair trade off. My voice sounded horrid this morning from being sick, and I was not ready to take on the day. 

We got our final case study in my int’l mktg class, which I’m super excited about because it is about Ferrari. And I absolutely LOVE cars. We did a small group exercise like we normally do every week, and this time it was a little different because it was about pricing strategy and after we gave what we thought were the correct multiple choice answers, our prof gave us the author’s answers and we were given a score from 1-5. Well…our team apparently is not very good at pricing strategy because we came in dead last. After class got out i had a field trip for my pop culture class in Camden Town, so I headed out of school and onto the tube for the gajillionth time.

Today our field trip was a trip to the Jewish Museum, which was surprisingly a fun field trip. We had a de-briefing by this cute old man who volunteers at the museum once a week, and he was so cheeky and lovely. My favorite section of the museum had to of been the memorial to the holocaust, because it was different from every other museum I have met on the holocaust, and way different from the concentration camp I visited when I was just 15 years old. This memorial stood out because it focused on one survivor from the holocaust, who is from Britain and after he was liberated, spent the rest of his life giving speeches about what happened during those awful years. It was such a moving section of the museum, and they have a video running of the man telling his story. I think the one thing that I will take away with me from that memorial was how after his wife, him, and his son got shipped off to the first of many concentration camps, 15 minutes later the papers that proved they were British citizens and which would have kept them safe from being deported had arrived. Fifteen minutes. That just breaks my heart, because his little boy and wife were taken to the gas chambers, and he didn’t find this out until he was liberated. 

I was looking forward to CAPA Thanksgiving, and even though I knew it would not even come close to what it would have been like back home in the states, it was still really great of them to put on a dinner for all of us. At my table, it was all Newman kids, and we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. It was then that I really missed being home with my family, where I would be cooking up a storm with my mom and sister. In the hotel where we had dinner though, they were showing the Packer game which I thought was awesome. I couldn’t really tell if the food was any good or not to be honest, because I have lost all sense of taste and smell due to being sick. I did however, take full advantage of eating lots and lots of mashed potatoes, turkey, and cranberry sauce. It may not have been the Thanksgiving that I am used to, but I will always remember “Turkey Day” in London

My school put decorations up for us

Thomas: Thanksgiving in Argentina

I decided it would be best to not mope around Buenos Aires over Thanksgiving and think about how much I miss spending the holiday in the U.S. In addition, there was still a large portion of the country I had not yet seen: Patagonia.

I’m blogging live from my hostel in El Calafate. There will be a post later on what I’m doing here, but as for now I want to share my own personal Thanksgiving lunch today.

That’s right, pizza, Patagonian beer, and flan for dessert.

Perfect.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sarah: ¡Feliz Día de Gracias! Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m not sure if Venezuelan turkeys exist or not, but regardless of whether I’ll be eating turkey tonight (or just more arepas), I’m excited for my untraditional Venezuelan Thanksgiving dinner experience. This will be my first Thanksgiving away from my family, so it does make me miss them, but I’m so thankful that I’ll be coming home to them in one week! Actually, I have exactly one week left here in Venezuela as of today, because I’ll be leaving for the airport early next Friday morning. It’s hard to believe that 3 and a half months went so fast. After my classes today, I will officially begin my last weekend in Venezuela, so I definitely want to make it count!

Tonight, VENUSA (our school) is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for all of the students and their host families. Thanksgiving isn’t actually celebrated here, but they are having the dinner for us, so we can feel at home.

Some of the students went to the market yesterday (while I was studying for 2 final exams) to buy fruit for tropical fruit pies. One is piña colada, coconut and pineapple that is, and another friend of mine who loves to bake is making a guava pie. Needless to say, I’m excited for the dinner tonight…it’s going to be an adventure! I’m hoping there will be a pumpkin pie tonight too – squash and pumpkin (which are considered the same thing here) are called “calabaza” or “auyama” are pretty popular ingredients in soups, so we’ll see if someone is brave enough to transform them into a delicious home-made pumpkin pie tonight! Unfortunately I have a final paper due this morning for my politics class, and then 4 classes to attend throughout the day. That’s a total of 8 hours of class (my Thursdays are always busy) and then the dinner starts just after my last class gets out, so I have no free time for baking. 

Oh well, I guess I’ll just eat and photograph. I can handle that! It’s weird knowing that it’s Thanksgiving and I still have class…and not seeing all of my Mom’s festive decorations. But I’ll make the best of it, study the day away, and then enjoy dinner and be thankful for all of the wonderful people I’ve met here and get to spend Thanksgiving with!

Meghan: 12 year olds & Thanksgiving

During high school, I would spend hours imagining what my life would be like in the future. Just as, I’m sure, almost everyone reading this blog has done as well. I feel like a different person, from those days when all I wanted to do was work with animals, or travel the world as an anthropologist. I am a different person. I never would have imagined that during my Junior year of college I would be sitting in a comfortable, yet bare bedroom on the third floor of an apartment building, overlooking an ancient and unique city, reminiscing about the previous week as my pumpkin pie takes its precious time baking in the oven.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I don’t think I could have had a better one, aside from being home with my family. Each day leading up to Thursday seemed to drag on, as I monotonously went to class…too excited for upcoming weekend full of celebrations, food and friends.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I willingly set myself up to go slowly insane…via twenty-five extremely curious, and outright hilarious, Italian twelve year olds. For the last couple of weeks I have begun working at The Scuola Media Gandino, and Italian middle school about twenty minutes from my apartment, teaching English… or really, facilitating any form of conversation from the rowdy kids. The first couple of weeks were more than entertaining: filled with “getting to know you” games and hundreds of random questions about my personal life. Typically, the class begins with a simple “what did you do this weekend?”, followed by a serious interogation of their new American teacher. Here are some examples, in order of importance (according to them):

1. “How old are you?”
2. “Are you from Scotland?” No. “London?” No. “Australia?” Do I sound Australian? “New York?” Nope. But you’re closer! “Miami!” “California!” Too far! “L.A.!” I wish. Oregon!” Oregon? Really? “Texas!!” God, no.
3. (Naturally, I had to tell them. Who knew that no one in Italy has ever heard of Milwaukee, or Wisconsin for that matter.)
4. Have you Facebook? Yes. “What is your second name? How do you write your names?” (These are normal sentence structures for Italian kids…quite entertaining! Also, they only want to know how to spell my name in order to become my “friend” on Facebook. Pigs will fly before I “friend” 70 Italian twelve year olds!)
5. “Do you have a boy?” Translation: Do you have a boyfriend? No.
6. “Is your boy the boy of your dreams?”(All the boys look up expectantly. The girls all giggle. This is only proof that Italian’s are all romantics at heart—even if your only in the 7th grade. They need to time to hone their skills. Why not on an American teacher? Also, this is proof that they don’t listen.)

I could go on and on with the most ridiculous questions possible from 12 year olds, but I’ll let you use your imagination! Every hour that I spend with them brings not only new insight into the world of teaching (and discipline, for that matter) but the feeling that I’m doing what I love and feel passionate about! Be it lessons on movies, Thanksgiving, or the meaning of the American flag and the Thirteen Original Colonies (try to ask a 12 year old American today if they can list all 13 without looking… My Italian kids can!). I always leave the school happy and confident.

Now, to round things off because I’m tired and need to finish the never-ending blog post. This weekend I :

• Had an amazing Thanksgiving meal at a local restaurant and ate so much food I pretty much had to roll myself home;
• My friend Miche, from Tuscany, came to visit and we had an amazing time doing the following:
• Going to three different markets, both normal and Christmas
• Ate delicious Indian food
• Watched three episodes of “Are you Afraid of the Dark” and “Monsters Inc.”
• Had an American “Home-sickness Party” with the necessary Hamburgers!
• Ate my weight in chocolate at the local chocolate festival!
• Wandered around Bologna admiring the beautiful Christmas lights!
• Pumpkin Pie!!!!
• and finally: Played in the SNOW!!!

 

Britta: An Italian Thanksgiving

This is definitely the best Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving meal I’ve had away from home. BCSP was very kind and helped us Americans celebrate one of our favorite holidays. We ate at Trattoria Scacco Matto, with all the students, and the professors from the pre-session and other people who have played an important role in making it possible for us to study abroad in Bologna this year.

We started out with a delicious pumpkin soup which tasted like the fresh innards of a pumpkin, flavorful but yet a light texture. Then they brought out the turkey, and the director and his son made the first cut. It was a turkey stuffed with a blend of ground turkey, onion, and other spices. And they did it just right by serving mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, green beans, and a salad. To finish off the meal we had apple pie in a sweet cinnamon sauce.

It was a delicious meal in the company of good friends made while in Bologna, full of laughter, and some embarrassment of our knowledge of U.S. history as one girl continued on her family tradition with a Thanksgiving quiz.