A Mexican Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is probably the most uniquely American holiday we celebrate.  While people may argue that the 4th of July holds this distinction, I disagree.  Every country has their own version of the 4th of July to celebrate either the signing of a declaration or the end of a revolution.  How countries celebrate their Independence may differ from country to country, but the sentiment is the same, it's a birthday party for the country.  Thanksgiving, however, is uniquely American- something I don't think I entirely appreciated until I spent this holiday in México.

Firstly, try describing to someone who has no prior knowledge of the holiday, the significance of Thanksgiving.  This past week I found myself explaining Thanksgiving to my coworkers and as I was talking, I realized how silly it must seem to someone who has no prior knowledge about Thanksgiving that we have a holiday to celebrate Indians and Pilgrims sharing a meal together???  Growing up as an American, I know there is more significance to the holiday than that, but at its most basic, this is what we are celebrating.  For their part, in order to try and understand the significance of Thanksgiving,  many of my coworkers would try to equate it to another Mexican holiday..."Is it like 16 de Septiembre?" (their independence day) or "20 de Noviembre" (Revolution day).  After them throwing out many holidays to try and find one that is even a little bit similar, we come to the conclusion that there is not a similar holiday in the Mexican calendar.

Secondly, given the the fact that there is no other holiday quite like it in México, or anywhere else, how does one explain why it is such a big deal in the states.  How has celebrating a meal shared between the Pilgrims and Indians become what is in my opinion, one of the two most significant holidays in America (the other being Christmas)?  That is something I could not even begin to explain to my coworkers, as I do not know the answer myself.  While I think Thanksgiving is deserving of its stature as one of the top holidays, I do not know how such a seemingly insignificant act of sharing a meal ad giving thanks for the year's blessings has come to be so significant in American culture.

Despite the fact that I have rambled on here for quite some time about Thanksgiving and how American it is, the funny thing is, I have probably never had a more American Thanksgiving than I did here in México.  For starters, Whitney invited us to Thanksgiving at her house.  She invited Cassie and me, people from her office, and friends in the community. Her idea being, what a great opportunity this would be to share an American tradition with those that have shared so much with us about the Mexican culture...something I couldn't agree more with.

For some time this was the only thing I thought I would be doing to commemorate Thanksgiving, but very suddenly my week became very full with Thanksgiving activities, hence how I had one of the most Thanksgivingy Thanksgivings ever.  Here is a rundown of some of my activities:

-Bring apple pie bars to the office to commemorate the day with my coworkers.  I enjoyed doing this as no one expected it and I got to share a little bit about Thanksgiving with everyone.
-Judge an English Spelling Bee at the school where I recently began taking Spanish classes. There was also a Thanksgiving celebration afterwards with the English students and teachers dressed as Pilgrims, Indians, and Turkeys. They also performed a skit commemorating Thanksgiving.  See what I mean when I say my Thanksgiving was very Thanksgivingy...I felt like I was in the states...I mean the skit was even in English!
-Thanksgiving Feast in the evening...finally!

Whitney describing each dish

It is a little bit tricky to make a Thanksgiving dinner in México as they do not carry all the same ingredients as we do. This meant we had to be a little creative with some of the recipes.  For example, there are no fresh or canned cranberries to be found here, but they do have dry cranberries.  Whitney had the foresight to look up a recipe to see if you could make cranberry sauce from dried cranberries and what do you know, you can...and they are quite tasty!  Completing our meal was turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, honey wheat bread, apple pie, a strawberry tort, and my additions of green bean casserole, sautéed spinach, and dipping into my southern roots-homemade mac and cheese! All in all I felt we did an excellent job creating a traditional Thanksgiving meal in México.  The only 'missing' items were sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.  All the food was excellent and we had a great evening celebrating the holiday.  Our Mexican guests all seemed to enjoy the food, even if they asked where the chile was!

The complete spread

Cassie whipping up the whipped cream

After Thursday ended I thought that besides eating leftovers, this would mark the end of my Thanksgiving celebrations.  Oh how I was wrong.  Friday, I had a Spanish class and my teacher invited me to the annual Thanksgiving that was later that night that the school hosts for the employees and any Americans they know in Guzmán who may be missing out on Thanskgiving (I believe there were 3 Americans there). I showed up not really knowing what to expect, but turns out there was another traditional Thanksgiving feast awaiting me.  There were probably 30 people there, none of whom I really knew, but I enjoyed getting to know some new people in the city.  This feast included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, fruit salad, AND sweet potatoes!  If you recall sweet potatoes were one of the foods I was missing from the previous night's feast.  And to further satiate my southern taste buds they happened to be mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. After devouring the food, enjoying some of Guzmán's traditional Ponche de Granada (a pomegranate flavored alcoholic drink), and listening, but not participating in, karaoke, my second Thanksgiving for 2014 was in the books.

After my second feast- notice the sweet potatoes!

Again, I thought I was done with Thanksgiving activities at this point, but at the feast I was invited to a little program the next day the school was hosting.  So the next day I appeared yet again at the school to find little booths full of thanksgiving facts and food samples the teachers had prepared for the students at the school.  Food samples included cornbread, mashed potatoes, pizza (?), and PUMPKIN PIE.  Now pumpkin pie was the only traditional food I had been missing from my previous two feasts and while they called this pumpkin pie it tasted nothing like the dessert.  It was more of a cheesecake flavor, but I did appreciate the fact that I still got to eat a dessert that someone at least called pumpkin pie.  Also, I'm not sure where they got their information about eating pizza on Thanksgiving, but the teachers were saying it is traditional to eat pizza before the Thanksgiving feast.  I personally have never eaten pizza on Thanksgiving, but I was amused hearing non-Americans describing the Thanksgiving holiday and the traditions even though some things may have been slightly off.  I also "learned" that apparently pumpkin pie is only traditional for African Americans to have on Thanksgiving!

After this event, my marathon of Thanksgiving activities came to an end.  I must say it now feels strange to think that I had worried that I may not be able to do my favorite holiday justice in México.  After not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Thanksgiving themed activities I managed to celebrate this holiday more thoroughly than I probably would have in the United States.  Now I may not have had my immediate family with me to celebrate Thanksgiving, but my family in México of fellow volunteers and new friends sure came through to make Thanksgiving 2014 one I will never forget.

Thanksgiving skit by students from the English language school

Work Update

You may have been wondering what I actually do here in México, or if you haven't I bet you are now...
The first few months of any volunteer's service are spent figuring out what you can do to help your community.  For me, I quickly found myself venturing out to the schools in Ciudad Guzmán inquiring if they had any interest in a gringa coming around to teach the kids about environmental topics. Fortunately for me, the schools said they did and off I went!
So far I have taught at 2 schools, primarily teaching students in the 5th and 6th grades. I started in September and this week will mark my last week at these specific schools as I will find new ones to work at in the new year.  This has been a learning experience for me for a couple of reasons:

1) I had no formal classroom teaching experience prior to this
AND
2) I had to teach in Spanish, a language I am still getting the hang of and probably will be for the rest of my service and beyond...so many things to learn!

Here are some photos from my classes:

Students digging for trash pieces in the mini landfills we
made to observe decomposition rates

Happy kids!

I will be eternally grateful to these schools for letting me come every week.  They were very patient with me as I learned how to teach.  Some classes went better than others as I tried out activities and figured out what works and what doesn't.  I'm happy to say that in my opinion I have progressed greatly in 3 months (most of that due to my Spanish improving) and I look forward to continuing that trend in the coming year.

Lately I have also been out visiting rural communities in the area.  This past month my other mission at work right now is to find a rural community to work in (I think after much searching I have finally found one, yay!).  In my efforts to find a suitable community I have been traveling to various communities and here are some photos from those trips.

Inauguration ceremonies in the community of Ferrería in honor of
 the opening of their Casa de Paja
(aka a straw house, a cheap and durable way to build a building)

Respiratory section of the medicinal garden located
behind the Casa de Paja

Lombricomposta (worm compost)

View of the completed Casa de Paja

View of the medicinal garden in the community Epenche

My office works in various rural communities by providing them with the training and funding to build medicinal gardens, worm composts, and casas de paja (among other things).  Usually it is a group of between 15-25 women, or Señoras, in the community that provide the manpower for these projects. Once the women learn the ins and out of growing the medicinal plants they are able to sell products such as soaps and oils.  It seems to take a few years for the women to learn the tricks of the trade and organize themselves to do this, but once they do it is an added income source for their families...every bit of money helps in these small communities far away from cities.  I love the warm and welcoming people you find in the more rural areas which is why I'm looking to work in one, plus I feel I could be useful. My plan would be to go and visit the community every week or so and provide assistance as needed whether that is teaching kids or picking up trash, I am open to whatever!

For the inauguration ceremonies in these communities we were served A LOT of food.  Here is a view of one of the meals I was served...although this one was a little oily and greasy for my taste and I am 99.9% sure was the source of a recent stomach bug I had, I still appreciate the gesture!

Meat, beans, rice, tortillas, and coke to wash it down: typical Méxican meal

While touring a community I  found corn about 10 feet tall! 

Here ends your little update on my work happenings in México.  I also want to say Happy Thanksgiving! to everyone back home.  Be sure to eat a little extra pumpkin pie for me as that will be missing from my Thanksgiving meal this year...turns out there is not enough demand for pumpkin pie mix in México for it to be found in the supermarkets.  I will have to 'settle' for apple pie this year :)