Accion de Gracias 2009 en Cajamarca

My first Thanksgiving away from home! It was bittersweet. But, overall, I had a great Peruvian Thanksgiving. Some of the volunteers and I met up in the city to have our Thanksgiving feast. We chose a restaurant that was situated over a piece of farmland surrounded by fresh turkeys and ducks that they ultimately slaughtered for us. We ate roast duck, roast turkey, sweet mashed potato, honey glazed carrots, beet salad, gravy, and for dessert, apple crisp and pumpkin pie...Aw, so delicious! Y'all would be pleased to know that the restaurant was going to charge us s./50 just for the pie itself. (That is a $17 pie!!) So the night before, I made that lovely pie displayed in this first photo...without an oven, without canned pumpkins, without pre-made pie dough! Top that, Martha!! (I even made an extra one to share with my family and, by morning, when I was about to get a slice for myself before my travels, it was all gone. I think they enjoyed their first pumpkin pie!)

After our feast, some of us went out to see the new "Twilight" movie. It hadn't been dubbed to Spanish, yet, so I got to understand everything they were saying. Overall, it was a great day. While I missed being with my family this year, I am truly grateful for being able to say that I am finally a Peace Corps volunteer.

Anyways, this is plate #1. Eventually, I gorged myself with seconds and third helpings of turkey and duck. (I don't think I've ever eaten so much meat since being in Peru...It was heavenly!) The next day, I came home after practically overeating myself into a coma, ran into a lady whom I had met a few months earlier and the first thing that she said to me was that I had gained weight ("Que linda!") and then she pinched my fat little cheeks to prove her point. :(

This is also what I discovered the day after I got back. Something bit me during the night while we stayed in our super cheap hostal. It's rainy season, so the bugs are back in full force.

I didn't want to pop the sucker, because, well, quite frankly, we had just watched the Twilight movie and I thought that it was like a love bite from Team Edward. (No, I'm not swooning over a teenage boy...He's of age, you guys!) Anyways, but then the bite just got bigger and bigger until one day, I tripped coming into my room, scraped the poor little sucker, and the whole thing just popped and the pus just went all over the floor.

Now, did you guys really think that I was just going to end a post with warm fuzzies and rainbows just because it's the holidays?!