One of the strangest parts about living in another country is the part where your forget that the random Thursday in November that seems like any other late spring day is actually Thanksgiving. All of your friends and family back home are stuffing themselves with Turkey and preparing to fight the crowds of Black Friday while you just get up, go to work, and... yeah.
Sarah (the other gringa at my school that arrived in August) and I had a mini-party when the cafeteria happened to be serving turkey and mashed potatoes that day for lunch. We also had our coworkers tell us what they were thankful for... coincidentally teaching some of them the word thankful.
That evening, rather than try to create a sub par traditional Thanksgiving dinner in our shoebox of a kitchen, we decided to create our own tradition by heading out for a terrifically Chilean Thanksgiving dinner complete with Chacarero (green beans abounding), papas fritas (potatoes.. duh) and beer.... that is just a given. Our "Gracias-giving" was a great and pleasant success.
We finished the night with some Bravissimo cheesecake and our fancy-ish bottle of wine from Argentina, officially making it a very multi-cultural evening.
For Jacqui's last weekend in Chile, we took her to the artisan town of Pomaire about an hour outside of Santiago. Michael and I had been a few times before to walk the streets of artisan shops full of clay made pots, and pigs. (The "chanchitos" only have 3 legs.. this is good luck... I don't know). Pomaire is such a great little piece of Chilean charm. We souvenir-shopped, empanada-ate and posed with the world's largest clay pig. Yes that is a thing... and yes it is as awesome as it sounds.
The 90 degree weather didn't deter the placement of ginormous Christmas trees throughout town. Honestly, without Thanksgiving to get in the way, the Christmas decorations began popping up around November 1st. Indoor trees like this guy looked happy:
While this guy looked like he was sweating and hating his life: (we feel you bro... seriously)
We rounded out November, sweaty and thankful.
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