Thanksgiving

I just celebrated my first and one of my most favorite holidays in Ethiopia—Thanksgiving. I like any solid excuse to dedicate a day to eat, drink, and play excessively and also where there is no expectation of gift-giving. The pilgrims got at least something right. Celebrating an American holiday an ocean and continent away is always interesting. This one was not as bad as July 4th in Argentina. No one really cares about that one unless you are American. At least the concept of eating food and drinking all day with your family is not foreign here. Actually, that is exactly how they spend most of their many holidays anyway.

Luckily, I was not forgotten back home (we’ll see about next year). I am thankful to have such a thoughtful family who still made a place for me at the table decked with a name plate and framed picture. They reported back that I was well behaved. A little creepy, but sweet.

The 40 of us did a pretty nice job making the most of the day. Thursdays are the only day of the week we are together. We all manage to get along, mixing and mingling among our four small training groups that make up one larger Group 3. A little awkward, but so is everything else we tend to experience here. The best way to describe the difference between our training set-up and the two previous years is to say that our training is great for Peace Corps, but lacking in the social aspects. The Group 2 volunteers all lived together in one area, but our group is divided into four for Community-Based Training. It is probably better this way and maybe it will lessen the shock when we live on our own in the next couple weeks (yikes!). From what I hear, Group 2 has some stories to tell from their training. As for our group, a crazy night may include us staying out 30 minutes after dark (which means 7 pm) in order to finish a card game. My how things have changed from my recent college days. A fellow trainee and I joke that so far our time here resembles more like rehab than anything else. It’s a nice thought, so far it is working (and it is cheaper).

Every week a couple of Group 2 volunteers come into town to school us Group 3 trainees. For this week in particular they utilized some of their cooking skills to prepare our Thanksgiving meal. Although nothing remotely close to my family’s cooking, the funfetti (!) cake and mashed potatoes and gravy were legit. I don’t even like gravy, but I find myself eating anything that looks remotely familiar. I never took a strong liking to beets, avocados, or hard boiled eggs, but now I find myself smiling when they are served to me. It’s funny how living abroad increases the tolerance of your taste buds, while simultaneously lowering other sorts of tolerances. To help us all feel a little loved on our first holiday in Ethiopia, we all gave thanks to one another in the form of a written compliment. To sum up the remarks I received (because I know you are all dying to know), they think I have a decent sense of humor. So much so that I can make someone ‘giggle like a little school girl’ and have the capacity to ‘make a dead man smile.’ I prefer comments like this more than a compliment/insult (depends on your perspective, namely what culture you identify with most) I received a few weeks ago that went something like, “Look, Emily, this bean is fat like you.” Although I’ve never been compared to a bean before, I appreciated the poetic effort. I even journaled it, so I would never forget that special moment. When it came to thinking of what I was thankful for in the other trainees, it made me realize our group’s dynamics a little better. Each and every one of us contributes something in one way or another. Unfortunately, I do not know everyone as well as I would like, but I have managed to find a few people that are willing to tolerate me. We all come from different backgrounds (i.e. not everyone has a health degree of some sort), but we share many similarities. Obviously, there are some values we all have in common, but what knocks my socks off is that redheads make up 1/8 of this group. This type of statistic is unheard of. I just had to document it for proof (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Look how wonderfully awkward we are. I am even wearing the map shirt my grandma gave me as a going away present (Grandma, it was a hit!). Since it is 100% polyester, it is wrinkle-proof, which makes it the ideal garment for travel. Not to mention the fact that I have no need to carry around those pesky paper maps anymore. Although a bit outdated, all you need is a friend to point out the next destination. My job is to just sport it proudly. Who other than a grandma would find such a shirt in a church rummage sale that had the USSR and Korea as one country still printed on it? She is such a sweet angel. All in all, it was a nice, relaxing, language-class-free day spent with each other. I’m thankful for that (and the map shirt).

So friends, family, and others who have mistakenly ended up reading this whole blog entry, the countdown has begun. Soon I’ll be lugging my life cross country in a couple of bags on a bus praying for my life so I can start a new life in Injibara…Kosober…er…I’ll figure that out later. Before I know it, I’ll be leaving the comfort of Gonde (just when the kids started to remember my name) for a bigger town with more people who don’t know me, learning how to live again, and doing what I came here to do. Yet, I have a feeling these two years will be over before I have time to figure out how to squat on my heels and I’ll wonder how the time went by so fast. Yet, unlike college, I’ll remember most of the memories. So, to future self—I knew you could do it! Cheers!