Happy (Belated) Turkey Day!

This was the first Thanksgiving that I have not celebrated with family. While I was sad to not be at home, I still had a good turkey day. Apparently I had forgotten how much work Thanksgiving dinner can be. Rhiannon and I had decided to make dinner for our host families Thanksgiving night. Our host mother's are sisters so we picked Rhi's house to cook everything in. Thursday night everything was almost perfect. We had gone shopping the day earlier, and the ingredients for mac & cheese, sauteed green beans, garlic mashed potatoes (7 lbs!), stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie were all waiting to be put to good use. You may have noticed that the turkey was conspicuously absent from that list... Well it turns out that turkey is ridiculously expensive in Costa Rica ($60 for a tiny bird!), so our host mothers split the cost of chicken as their contribution to the meal. Unfortunately, Rhiannon and I did not have any recipes ready to prepare raw chicken. After some frantic google-ing we settled on baking it. We spent about two hours in the kitchen sautéing, boiling, baking, mashing, and speaking Spanglish. It was a little chaotic using all new recipes and no measuring cups, but so much fun!

Yum!
(photo credit: Rhiannon)

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! We all really do have a lot to give thanks for. I am very thankful to be able to spend this time abroad. This whole experience (since June) has been truly amazing! While part of me can't wait to get home next month, there's another part that wishes I could stay just a little longer. Only 11 more days...