Turkey (Chicken?) Day

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a good one. Yesterday was an interesting day for me for sure.

For those of you who don't know, Mark headed to the US on Wednesday to celebrate the marriage of his friend Ryan Harmon... and was blessed to be able to spend his T-day meal with his family in Wheaton. I was so happy for him but was also happy I got a couple phone calls during the day. :) He heads to the Nebraska for the wedding today and promises to be a good driver.

Yesterday, I started out my morning working from home and flipped on the Macy's Parade. I called my mom after about 10 minutes of watching because I got nostalgic... of a parade I never did really watch all that much of! I was alone in the house and started thinking about all the things back in the states that I had to be thankful for... and I have to be honest, most Thanksgivings I don't even really think about what I'm thankful for, but when you're away from some of the things you're most thankful for, it comes to life. Makes sense?

Anyway, my friend Nancy from our cultural adaptation weekend came down from the campo for Thanksgiving and I picked her up at the bus station. We started working in the kitchen at 2pm for a 6pm dinner and had all the fixins' ready in time when the guests started to arrive. All of the normal stuff was served (mashed potatoes, mom's broccoli cassarole, grandma Cherry's creamed corn, bacon green beans, greek salad, rolls...) but we couldn't find turkey ("pavo" in Spanish) anywhere. Plus, considering this was my first Thanksgiving to cook anything, let alone the whole thing, I wanted to go as simple as possible. So... we bought four large chickens from the local Provocon Cuatro restaurant (photo above).

We had a full table of eight people (four Americans, two Dominicans, one Argentinian and a Colombian) and my neighbor from France loaned me his beer crates to set the sparkling cider on. The food was awesome, and before we dove into the apple pie, I was reminded of a Cherry family tradition I wanted to give a whirl. Each person around the table shared one thing they were thankful for in 2006... and it really turned out to be a special time. There was something that happened when we all shared publicly what God had done in our lives over the past year that drew us together, and although many of us were far from our own families and cultures, it really did feel like family because we were brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not cliche, but true.

We have a lot to be thankful for, don't we?