Thanksgiving: Turkey and Water Balloons…yum

Definition of Thanksgiving (according to the 10^th anniversary edition of the internationally celebrated dictionary, “Words and Wonders from the Brain of Kate H. Lena”): a holiday celebrated by many on the last Thursday of November- it is a time to be spent with family and/or friends-you, with these loved people, eat a lot; it usually involves turkey and a number of sides, courses and pies (you will probably eat too much, but this is part of Thanksgiving, so do not worry about it. You can go back to the gym tomorrow.) While there are many TV programs that are associated with this day (football, Macy’s Day parade, dog show, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving), the day is not spent around the TV, rather around the table. At the table, you give thanks, be it out loud or in your head, for the riches that you have. It is a warm fuzzy feeling kind of holiday and one of my favorites.

So…you may be wondering (or you may not, but I will tell you anyway) how I spent this fantastic holiday away from home. Well, it all started on the 23^rd of November, the day before Thanksgiving. My friend, Lindsey and I, went food shopping at this fancy food store in Chinandega, for the turkey and other non-thanksgiving ingredients (but very important ingredients to keep a mind and soul sane and happy- for example: cheddar cheese). In my mind, I had thought that I had heard that you buy about half a pound of turkey per person that will be at your celebration. Well, we were planning on being about 8, but I wanted to have leftovers, so I was planning on a 6 pound turkey. (what was I thinking….? I have no idea.) A 6 pound turkey is actually quite tiny…the size of a small new born baby. And they did not even sell turkeys that small, so we went for an 11 pounder and planned to eat turkey for the next month. Fine by me. Anyway…the 24^th rolls around and I woke up very excited and happy…a little sad to not be with family, but happy to have a good group of friends coming over. After spending a stressful morning running around Corinto doing errands for work, Lindsey came over to help stuff and rub down the turkey. After bringing the bird in a salt water bath, Turkey was ready for a deep tissue massage of oil, oregano, parsley, cilantro, pepper, salt, garlic and onion. (What a way to go, huh?) We stuffed Turkey and carried him over to the borrowed oven. After a brief moment of panic, worrying about singeing off my eyebrows, we lit the stove and Turkey entered his tanning booth. Shortly after Turkey started to bake, John (my sitemate) and Gabe (fellow Nica 55er) came over and we started off the day right with football, wine and veggies with ranch dressing. The table was beautifully set by Lindsey and I complete by homemade coasters, compliments of Lindsey. We are an extremely classy bunch of people. After about 3 hours of cooking Turkey and the addition of 3 more friends: Tony, Caryn and Ryan, Turkey was ready to be eaten. It smelled INCREDIBLE. The meat was extremely tender and juicy. You always worry about it drying out, but this was not even close to being dry. For our first ever solo cooked turkey, done during PC service, I was more than impressed. Our spread included this 11 lb beautiful beast of a bird, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole-ish dish, cornbread, cranberry sauce, tuna pasta salad and cake. Although we were not with family and the food was not exactly the same as at home, we had a great Thanksgiving meal.

Our Thanksgiving did not end there. After eating, we noticed a group of high school students (seniors-that day was their last day of school) with a bunch of water balloons-well plastic bags filled with water. A couple people approached them and the challenge was thrown. Water balloon war. The only rules are do not throw water in the house. We started filling our bags and talked strategy. We spread out on the street and waited for the GO. Right away those children threw all of their balloons and we thought we had them. They had used up all of their balloons on the first attack and we, adults, had saved ours. We were ready for the kill….or so we thought…we lead our attack and realized that they had many many many many many many more balloons than we did. We resorted to throwing water out of buckets. WE still got beat so badly. I was soaked…my entire body. Defeated, we shook hands, signed their senior t-shirts and vowed that next year, would be different. We would be ready. Thanksgiving ended with a phone call from home-shoutout to the fam- so nice to talk to everyone!