Celebrating the holidays with new friends in Chile has been great. We certainly miss our friends and family back home, but this holiday season has been more peaceful since we skipped the whole shopping madness scene.Our Thanksgiving was actually three different awesome meals, very similar to our Thanksgiving dinners at home, though conspicuously absent were the sweet potatoes. Bill and I enjoyed a lunch given by the U.S. Embassy. I felt a little guilty about leaving the girls back at the apartment with their Subway sandwiches, since children weren't invited, but they were thrilled because it was the first time they were able to babysit Amelie (the adorable baby of fellow Fulbright teachers John and Melinda). Besides a delicious meal, we also enjoyed meeting several other Americans now living in Chile and some Chileans who would soon be leaving to study in the U.S.
After the lunch, Bill, John and Melinda went back to the apartment while I returned to my school because the Director had asked me to stop by, they had something for me. It was a roasting pan holding a big, stuffed, cooked turkey. Opting for a taxi instead of my usual bus ride home from school, I delivered the turkey to the thrilled astonishment of everyone at the apartment. Everyone but Bill and Sarah, the vegetarians, who would have been far happier with a sweet potato casserole. I called up a couple of Chilean friends to invite them over, and Melinda and I went to the supermarket to buy everything we would need to make our second Thanksgiving meal! Though we ended up eating quite late, this dinner turned out great and, again, the only thing missing were the sweet potatoes.
The third Thanksgiving dinner was an incredible meal cooked by Melinda, chef extraordinaire, in her tiny, little kitchen on her teeny, weeny stove and enjoyed by about twenty-five people in the beautiful, spacious San Bernardo home of Cecilia and Pedro, "the suegros". Click below to see more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/ThanksgivingWithTheSuegros
Cecilia and Pedro and their children Camila and Felipe graciously opened their home to us again on Christmas Eve so that we could enjoy the holiday Chilean-style, where the party was still going strong at 4:30 a.m!
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/ChristmasInChile02
