Pavo = turkey

So coming in as the November swear-in group has provided a few slightly unique challenges, mainly that after only being in site for a few weeks, we spend the holiday season away from our families, with people we hardly know. This Thanksgiving was my first Thanksgiving away from my family, and although in some circles it pales in comparison to Christmas, it has always been my favorite holiday, and a pretty big one in our family. I come from a home where everybody is a great cook (except for me, for some reason; I think it’s the impatience) so it seems every Thanksgiving I get to try some new spin on a classic, and it’s (almost) always delicious. It was therefore hard being away not only from the comfort and love of my family, but away from the food too.

This Thanksgiving, almost all of us in the East (less than 20!!!) got together to eat, thank, and be merry. We headed up into the chilly mountains of Jalapa to Libby’s house to have our potluck, and we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful setting. Although my site seems to run at about 80 degrees at it’s coldest during the day, Libby’s site was just chilly enough to give us a perfect Thanksgiving setting. After a confusingly long bus ride(s) by my sitemate, Brynna, and I, we finally arrived and immediately got to eating. We were some of the first people there, which was nice because we got to socialize with other Volunteers that we either new very little or didn’t know at all. And we ate all the Puppy Chow Chex Mix. So good. Libby had been cooking the turkey for hours already at that point, and it looked AMAZING. The smell in her little Guatemalan home was delicious, and almost had me licking the walls. When the rest of the group finally arrived, we dug into all the typical Thanksgiving food, including the worst cornbread I’ve ever eaten, made by me. Awesome. Really doing the South proud. Everything else was perfect though, and chowing down on a huge turkey leg with new and old friends was a perfect way to end the first month of my service.

After our meal, we all loaded up in the back of a pickup and headed to Pino Dulce to stay at an amazing ecolodge there, where I stayed for a few nights during Field Based Training. The owners already had a fire going, so we pulled out the marshmallows and relaxed. It was a beautiful night, and a great end to a relaxing day.

The next day, a few of our group had to leave, so it was a smaller crowd of us that was lucky enough to make friends with the owner, his son, and his grandson, and we all got to do the ziplines over the park for free! The park is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen here in Guatemala (and that’s quite the compliment!) and it was breathtaking flying through the trees and across huge crevasses. I screamed for probably the first 3 ziplines before I finally got the hang of it and stopped freaking out. Or so I thought. Around the next corner was a “hanging bridge” where we walked across a wobbly group of boards with NOTHING to hold on to! When I finally made it across I was so proud of myself, but everyone else in the group was laughing about how long it took me to cross. I thought I had done a good job, but apparently taking 20 minutes to walk 30 yards isn’t that impressive.

After our ziplining adventure, we went into the nearest town and stocked up on food and booze for that night. It was a fun time that night, with only a short scary period where we thought we had run out of booze, but luckily Carmen and Kristen saved the day by talking the bus driver into taking them into town. Crisis averted. The next day we packed up and headed back to our sites. I missed my family a lot, but my new Volunteer family made sure I didn’t have time to be sad.