Thanksgiving Abroad

Thanksgiving in Spain was definitely something very different than the holiday in the States. I wasn’t really expecting anything spectacular, but this year, I came away with some really wonderful stories from the Thanksgiving season.

It all started a few weeks ago when I was making my PowerPoint presentation (I know, I know…I decided not to do a Prezi because of the stupid, old computers at my school…they don’t like Prezis…) about Thanksgiving. I made the show, complete with descriptions of food, the parade, football, Black Friday, the Indians (excuse me, “First People”), the Pilgrims…it was a pretty great presentation, if I do say so myself. But, I had some trouble figuring out what activity to do with the kids after I talked. I had already done a crossword for Halloween and a quiz/wordsearch for Guy Fawkes’ Day (don’t even get me started on why I had to present on this “holiday”), so I was at a loss for Thanksgiving. After searching endlessly online and coming up with nothing, I had a stroke of creativity and ended up making a printout of a turkey on one side of a paper, and a blank template for a letter on the other side. The kids would have to write in all of the feathers what they were thankful for (family, friends…chocolate, Justin Bieber…whatever). Then, on the other side, they would write a letter to one of those things/people saying why they were thankful for it/them. Quite an inspired idea, I thought.

So the first group I gave the presentation to was 1st bachillerato (16-17 years old). The talk went great, and then at the end, I showed some videos. The first was a montage of clips from a Black Friday at a Target in Utah at 4.00am (prefaced with “Not all Americans are like this…”). It showed people screaming, shoving, running amuck, and just general Black Friday mayhem. The second video was Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade clips. Then the third was what the class really had fun with. It was the Radio City Rockettes performing at the Macy’s Parade in 2010. In that particular year, the Rockettes were feeling especially homologous. The first (and I would even venture to say, the only) thing that these students picked up on was that there was only one African American Rockette. By the end of the number, they had all decided that there was indeed a second one as well, she was just a lot lighter in skin tone than the first. I don’t think they quite understood the point of the video…

Another class I gave the Thanksgiving presentation to was 2nd E.S.O (12-13 years old). I teach this class English on Mondays, then directly after English, I have music class with them. Because of this, they’ve gotten to know me a little better than the classes who only have me for one period a week. When I gave 2nd E.S.O the assignment to write down what they were thankful for, I walked around the room, seeing what everyone was writing. I was pleased to see that the majority of the class did not write that they were thankful for Tuenti (Spanish Facebook) like my 4th E.S.O kids did. But, as I was walking, I glanced at one boy’s paper (let’s call him Paco). Along with “my family,” “my friends, “ and “my spaghetti,” Paco had also written “Rachel.” I pointed to my name and said, “Paco! Thank you! That’s so nice!” and gave him a big smile. He blushed a little and didn’t say anything. Once the class moved on to writing their letters, I walked around some more. Each time I moved towards Paco, he would cover up his paper. Eventually I understood that he was writing his letter to me! Precious! I haven’t read it yet and while I’m a little scared to, I think it has great self-esteem boosting potential for me.

As far as the Thanksgiving Day, I had decided about a week before the Thursday that I needed to have a true Thanksgiving feast, so as not to be depressed and missing home. Since my apartment doesn’t have an oven, I asked my friend Josemi if in exchange for cooking, cleaning, and doing whatever else he asked, if I could use his kitchen (and oven) to host a Thanksgiving dinner for our Spanish friends. He graciously said “yes,” and I began to plan for the big dinner. I was determined to get as close to all of our traditional dishes as possible. I’ll make this part short (but don’t think that it was in any way), but over the week, I went into about 10 different stores, at least 20 times in order to get everything I needed. I found a turkey breast at a meat shop, dried cranberries at a store across town, celery (believe it or not, it’s rare here…my roommate had never seen it before) at a fruit and vegetable market, and eventually was pretty happy with my supplies.

On Thursday, I had to work at Zurbarán in the morning, then tutor in the afternoon. I had been prepping the food for a few days, letting home-cut bread cubes get stale on my counter, boiling and mashing fresh pumpkin (no canned variety here), and before I went over to Josemi’s house, I put the spice rub on the turkey that I had made. I trekked over to Josemi’s around 7.00pm with (not exaggerating) about 50 lbs. of food in three different (massive) bags. I definitely got my work out in that day. Once I unloaded everything, I got to work. I cooked straight for almost 3 hours. Everyone was so nice in offering to help, but I didn’t even really know what I was doing, so it was hard to try to direct people. So, besides some help with cutting vegetables, I can proudly say that I made the entire Thanksgiving feast by myself. We had told the rest of our friends that we would eat around 9.30pm, but this is Spain…so that obviously didn’t happen. Around 9.45, everything except the gravy was almost done. Since I had been cooking for so long, I felt gross. I ran home to shower while the turkey and everything else finished up. Feeling renewed and smelling much less like onion, I went back to Josemi’s, made the gravy, then we laid out all of the food. There were eight of us there and it really was like being with family. I’ve been so lucky with all of the friends I’ve made here and without them, my adjustment here would have definitely been a lot tougher.

Everyone made me say the “blessing” before we ate…but they insisted that I say it in English. Which is funny because only two of them know English really well, and only about half know any at all. After saying grace, we dug into the food. I was like a little Italian mother watching her kids eat and enjoy her meal. The turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, gravy, and mashed potatoes were all new flavors to everyone at the table and tasted just like home to me. For dessert, I had made pumpkin pie (like I said, with fresh pumpkins). I was pretty doubtful to see how it would turn out (I didn’t have any measuring cups/spoons, so everything was eye-balled), but in the end, it was delicious.

All in all, Thanksgiving was a great success. About half of the group made it out to bars to enjoy the rest of the evening (everyone else was feeling the effects of tryptophan, I guess) and we had a really fun time.

If I couldn’t be in North Carolina with my family for Thanksgiving, this year’s “Fakesgiving” was definitely the next best thing!