Thanksgiving: Grateful for a Malawi Family!

Brittany (L), Alisha (R), and I - WUSC volunteers and housemates!

Well, I had hoped to write about my job today, but after our fantastic Thanksgiving dinner, I am in a bit of a food coma and so I am taking the easy route and am going to share about today!  I'll get to talking about work later on this week, OK?

On Tuesday, we suddenly clued in to the fact that this weekend was Thanksgiving, and decided we'd have to have a big dinner, so we invited over a few friends and got thinking about the menu.  We thought we'd have a lot of difficulty finding ingredients for the typical Thanksgiving meal, such as turkey, pumpkin, cranberries, squash, and turnips (as well as the pre-prepared stuff), so we set aside Saturday as our shopping day.  We managed to find quite a lot of the ingredients, and what we didn't find, we either did without, or found recipes to make it from scratch!

We spent all day on Sunday preparing for the feast, and it turned out really well!  We had chicken with bacon, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, roast carrots, butternut squash, corn on the cob, crescent rolls, and pumpkin pie and ice cream for dessert!  Each of us housemates had a different task, and other than the Malawian corn on the cob, which tasted more like corn flour than sweet corn, we all felt it was a big success!

Some of the friends that came for dinner - Mylan and Ellie are also WUSC volunteers.

Jo Female's beautiful pumpkin pie - made with fresh pumpkin!

I also wanted to introduce you to my housemates.  Brittany, Alisha, and I are all WUSC volunteers and are living in Jo & Jo's house.  Jo Female is from the UK and works for a local NGO that educates children about HIV/AIDS through theatre, and Jo Male is from Ireland and is an art teacher at a local private school.  We all get along really well, and have a lot of fun together!  I am so thankful that I have such a great Malawi Family!

There is so much to be thankful for - and I want to mention a few of these in light of the holiday:  I am so thankful that I have an amazing and supportive family, fantastic friends at home and around the world, the resources to attend university and gain knowledge and skills, the ability to travel, the feeling of home that I have found here in Malawi, and wonder of internet that allows me to stay in touch with those I love!

Tuesday is Mothers Day here in Malawi - so Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers out there, and a special one to my fantastic Mumsy who is so sacrificial in her love and care for her family!

What are you thankful for this year?  Let me know in the comment section!

P.S. The chicks have finally hatched and are so cute & fluffy! Now we just have to manage to keep Artemis (the cat) and the crows from eating them before they grow up!