_-=Thanksgiving=-_

Thanksgiving



Picture 1
Brian and I blowing up balloons before Thanksgiving dinner at Xplorer


Picture 2
The seven of us in our silly skit L-R: Adam, Saara, Zoe, Emily, Me, Claudio, Brian


Picture 3
My Table

R-L: Me, My aunt Patty, My host mom, Jenny, Adam, Adam´s host mom, and another of Adam´s host relatives


Thanksgiving! I look forward to it every year! This year I was excited because I was in a new country and have a new perspective. I love thanksgiving not only because of the wonderful food, but also becasue of the family time. I was psyched to have some host family bonding time here... until i realised. Ecuadorians don´t celebrate Thanksgiving!!! We didn´t even get school off that day! Some of us considered skipping school that thurday, but the smarter of us, myself included, begged our regional manager sofi. She granted us permission to "not go" to school so we could get ready for the big thanksgiving dinner that Xplorer (my xchange group) was throwing for us and our host families. Sofi also told Zoe (a fellow xchange studend and my dear friend) and me that we had to sing. We were like "ummmm....." and we decided to do a little skit instead. When we told sofi our idea of writing a skit, she insisted on the 7 of us performing a play about the meaning of thanksgiving! The others werent all too thrilled, so zoe and i got volu nteered to write it... then zoe did the amazing "im not all that great of a writer, you write it and i´ll edit" So... I wrote it. When I finished, it was pretty funny (this was in spanish), but when zoe finished, it was even better!! She made me (playing me) quite funny and abnoxious. It was a lot of fun. We went to Xplorer to help set up and i made a pumkin pie to suprise my friend emily... the problem was the oven stopped working so we couldnt eat it just then... Sofi then talked zoe and i into singing afterall! the only song we could pull off (because emily handydandily brought back my wicked cd) was for good! This all leads to the sad story of the dessert contest. I wanted to do something somewhat easy, so I chose texas sheet cake out of the recipe book i made for facs class in 9th grade. Everything here is made from scratch, so i couldnt do any of my extravagent recipes, they all call for cake mix or brownie mix, and i was limited as i only had one big round pan to bake in. (im sorry i ended in a preposition) Well, I went to the wonderful Supermaxi (grocery store) and searched for ingredients we dont have. Well... cocoa powder for one thing! That would not stop me however, I used hot cocoa mix! and the vanilla extract that for some reason we had, but then we didnt? orange! I had to mix everything together in the restaurant down below, and as i was adding ingredients, there was nowhere t o put the bowl, so it sat in the middle of the HUGE stove.... and got half baked before i added much to it. It turned out with a fudge texture and had an orangy tasting chocolate icing... but it wasnt half bad. Needless to say, i did loose. Mine was not all that good compared to the other amazing desserts there. The dinner went pretty well. It consisted of salad (of more than one vegetable-- i was impressed) with unpitted green olives, corn salad (like potatoe salad, but withouth potatoes, and with corn), potato pureé (completely different than mashed potatoes) and gormet looking turkey... oh and rice (of course). The program went pretty well, zoe and i were magnificent, the play went well, emily won the dessert contest and my host mom and aunt got along well.