Thanksgiving

This week is thanksgiving and for the third year in row I am missing it. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and this year it seems to be making me more home sick then normal. I assume it’s because in the past while I have been abroad I have been with at least one other American who can empathize while this year I am living in a house of all international volunteers and am the only American in my village. A week ago I told my roommates about thanksgiving and that it would be really wonderful if we could make a nice dinner and make our own “thanksgiving”.  While everyone agreed still no one really understands what it is. I tried to come up with ideas of what we could make that might resemble thanksgiving. Regardless of the fact that we are all vegetarian, in order to have turkey we would have to kill it our selves. So that was obviously not happening. As I went through the available produce in my head the only thing that mildly resembled something I might see at thanksgiving was pumpkin. I began to create a menu that revolved around pumpkin. To start we could have a cabbage raddish salad with roasted pumpkin seats, for dinner a Pumpkin, Potato Soup, and for dessert crepes filled with a sweet pumpkin pie like concoction. PERFECT!

     Now the only problem was how to get the pumpkin.  While many of our neighbors grow and have vegetables we have not figured out exactly the bartering system. Therefore being able to obtain a pumpkin was a more complicated matter then just asking my Nepali neighbor. But I was determined and I had 4 days to make it happen! I asked the Nepali Volunteers if they could help me on this matter

and of course they said they would do their best. Well word spread fast that I wanted a pumpkin and everyone jumped on board to help get me one! However on Wednesday I still seemed to not have a pumpkin. I was starting to doubt the success of my thanksgiving meal when at lunch a few of the Nepali volunteers showed up with a pumpkin!!! I was so happy! I immediately went home to show my roommates but when I got home there was another pumpkin waiting for me!!! I was so excited about my two pumpkins that when my neighbor came by with a third pumpkin I was beside myself. Needless to say that night we feasted on pumpkin and celebrated a really special thanksgiving.