Thanksgiving

Jolene here.

It has been quite a few years since I last had a family Thanksgiving. Christmas is the big holiday for us. I've been living too far away from my family and/or been too busy with school and work to take time out in November, too, to have the family meal and fellowship that we used to do every year.

I expected Thanksgiving this year to be just like my past years of not really celebrating since the holiday isn't even on Uganda's calendar, but we actually had a pretty special day. Our neighbors Bob and Carol invited 8 of us over for a Thanksgiving meal. The 8 of us are of similar age which is similar to the ages of Bob and Carol's kids. We all agreed that the time was very much like having a family gathering, which was just really really really nice being so far from "home".

The meal was incredible!!! There was turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, carrots, waldorf salad (which is pretty incredible since you can't actually get any of the typical ingredients for it here and it was made entirely of things that aren't typically in it), fruit salad, stuffing, olives, homemade biscuits, cornbread ... I'm forgetting something, but EVERYTHING that is RIGHT about Thanksgiving meals was there. We didn't have yams, but we didn't even miss them. Maybe you don't understand that we don't get to eat these foods. It was amazing.

And I have to brag that Wes and I tag-teamed the pumpkin pie (started them less just over an hour before we were SUPPOSED to arrive ... thank goodness for "African time"!) and really pulled it off. Shau, you'll be jealous to know that Carol even asked me to teach her how I made the crust (did I mention this was my first time ever making pie?)!!!!!!!!!!! It went great with both Carol's homemade ice cream and my made-from-scratch vanilla pudding.

As if the food itself wasn't blissful enough, we just had a great time of fellowship sharing some of the things that we're thankful for, sharing some of our frustrations together, taking turns on the piano (I didn't touch it cuz my talent does NOT compare to the others who sat down after so long without playing and pulled out entire songs from memory!!!), and singing Christmas carols (dry season has hit with a vengence, so we needed a little something extra to take our minds off the sweat pouring from us to really believe it was Thanksgiving time). It was everything that I look forward to when I'm anticipating a family holiday, minus my actual family.

It makes me look forward with even more anticipation to the Christmas season and getting to do the real thing. It also makes me sad knowing that the same group will not all be together for a holiday again.