Thanksgiving

Helllo everyone!  My apologies for the radio silence, but the last two months have been a whirlwind!! So backtracking to November and my trip to Fianarantsoa to spend Thanksgiving with a whole bunch of volunteers.  Fianar in itself is not a particularly notable town, but it is the next large town after Antsirabe heading south from the capital.  We also have a large number of volunteers stationed around it and our own transit house there, making it a great place to have an even together.

I headed down from Tana to Antsirabe with a few other volunteers to break up the trip.  So on actual Thanksgiving, we stayed the night in Antsirabe and had amazing bleu cheeseburgers.  Very American!  I also got to skype my parents, sister, and cousins celebrating at my house in the states, which was great fun.

The next day, we began our trip down to Fianar, picking up a few more volunteers along the way.  Most of us stayed the night in a hotel, because our transit house there only has 6 beds and there were over 30 of us!  We went out on the town to celebrate our friend Cha Cha’s birthday, her last one here in Madagascar as she is in the group leaving in May.  My friend Christina and I turned in a bit early to watch the new twilight movie (yes, judge me, but they are hilariously terrible.  Also Helina Misikir I miss you and watching those movies!!!!)

The next day was Saturday, the day we had decided to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We had 3 different houses that people were cooking at all day, starting with killing the turkey at about 6 am.  Eric, Emma, and I made guacamole (because Emma’s town is the only place we have seen avocado in the off season) and stove top stuffing (because Eric brought it back from American with him).  People made delicious turkey, chicken, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, and all kinds of other wonderful things.  We also got to share the day with a few Malagasy guys to attend an English club with some of our volunteers.  They got to see what a real starchy, delicious, fattening experience American holidays are.

Of course, following the meal I felt a need for a nap, but also the need to watch American football.  Not only because my family always watches the lions play the packers on Thanksgiving, but because that Saturday was the OHIO STATE MICHIGAN GAME and I had wifi at the hotel.  However, I discovered very quickly that ESPN and Big Ten Network have changed their websites so you need to provide your cable information.  So I spent awhile trying to find a different website and managed to get small 5 second clips of the game.  So that was disappointing (as was the score) but I did cheer my boys in blue on ESPN gamecast.  Better than nothing!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well and I can’t wait to spend it back in the states again.