Here's a picture from last month's Republic Day celebrations. From right to left: host brother, host mother, host mother's niece, host mother's sister.
I've been dreading Thanksgiving for the past few days, since this would be the first time I'm not spending it with family. With no traditional foods and no one to celebrate with (to everyone else it's a normal Thursday), I figured it would be a sad and lonely day. I resigned myself to a fate of macaroni and cheese and sliced turkey (the closest I can get). However, I was pleasantly surprised this evening, when I woke up from a nap to find a huge dinner laid out and several friends at the house in an attempt to recreate the big family holiday that I longed for. It was so amazingly thoughtful, and the food was delicious. She's been paying attention to what foods I really like, and tonight's dinner contained many of them (including liver! yay!). She even made a pumpkin dessert! In Turkey they eat actual pumpkin, not the stuff from a can: the most common preparation appears to be soaking pumpkin chunks in massive amounts of sugar, cooking them in their own syrup and some spices, then sprinkling crushed walnuts on top. So good!
It may not be an American Thanksgiving, but it was really lovely, and a nice reminder that I have family here, too. I'm still missing everyone back in the States like crazy, of course!
No comments:
Post a Comment