Autumn in Montevideo: Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, even though flowers are blooming and it is 85 degrees outside, we managed to have an appropriate Thanksgiving dinner. Because she is absolutely amazing Raquel managed to procure two turkeys. (They don't eat much Turkey in Uruguay.) Rhonda had brought some French's onions and cream of mushroom soup back from the States we had all we needed.

Several of the girls and I pitched in to help. Last night Jennifer and Kimberly made sweet potato casserole and Anne started on cornbread for dressing. Raquel and Mariella got here early this morning and started cooking. Anne and Luke started on one of our THREE types of dressing, while Raquel worked on some more. Just like at home, I took the responsibility for the green bean casserole, now if you do any cooking,

you know this is not a huge job to volunteer for. It was a little more of a challenge because we didn't have enough cream of mushroom soup, so I had to make a cream sauce to supplement it. It turned out really well though. Nikita and I were going to make the mash potatoes too. We along with the help of a couple others peeled a large pile of potatoes. (Just like my army days.) Well to make a long story short, I didn't start the potatoes early enough, so Raquel had to come in and save the day and finish them for us.

So we managed to have turkey, 3 types of stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole (although they had to use pink marshmellows), cornbread, cranberry sauce (also brought by Rhonda from the States), and more. It was great. The true Thanksgiving Miracle was that Raquel managed to use the squash closest to pumpkin here and make pumpkin pies for us.

For chapel today, some of the girls lead the discussion of what the group was thankful for. (I actually missed it because I was still in the kitchen.) They had the group draw hand turkeys and write on the tail 5 things they were thankful for. To help get everyone in the mood... Caitlin dressed as an Indian. Considering the things she had to work with, I thought she did a pretty fantastic job!

To make the day more holiday like, we had lots of guests. I think there were 27 here for lunch. The group included Eric Rama, who is from Abilene, Caitlin and I had to really pester Grandpa Eric to come. All 4 of the Spanish teachers joined us, Rhonda's mother Gwen, Rhonda's Uruguayan friend from the States Rosana, plus the other usual friends of ACU Sandra, Marcos, Charo, Carolina, Carletta, and the other girl from North Carolina whose name I blanked on. Anyway it was great fun to be with so many loved ones.

I was really proud of our group for helping pitch in to set up and clean up rather than leaving it all to Mariella and Raquel. Several times after lunch, I would walk in the kitchen and see different people doing dishes so that no one got too tired of it. (I swear I was working too... we were doing dishes in my kitchen.)

Of course afterwards, many of the group participated in a normal Thanksgiving post-dinner tradition: Going to the beach.

Anyway... Here are a few more pictures from the day: