Thanksgiving in Mexico...

As any Expat will tell you, the hardest part of choosing to live in another country is being away from your family during the holidays. This year, I wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner and share my holiday with my friends and neighbors because they have been so gracious and inviting towards Seth and me. It was my way of saying, "Thanks" to them.

As all little parties go, it started out with just a few friends of maybe about 6-8 people. Then somehow, it turned into a much larger party of 15 adults and 3 children. I can't tell you how much I just loved having all those people in our home chit chatting and yumming down on the food. This will probably be most memorable Thanksgiving ever!

I made all the traditional foods of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. I decided since it was
going to be a larger group to throw in some spinach dip, sweet potato casserole, carrots, sausage balls, apple pie, and chocolate pecan pie. Kept it simple...yeah, right!

 Of course, we had to explain almost every dish to them, but they were all excited to try the American tradition that they have all heard about for so long. Everyone kept saying as they came in the door how they had been smelling the food for the two days I was cooking, and they couldn't wait to come eat. And boy, did they eat! Overall, it looked like the green bean casserole and stuffing were the biggest hits. They couldn't figure out what the sweet potato casserole was until I showed them one in the raw and then it was, "ahhh, ok." And evidently, Mexicans LOVE cranberry sauce. I did not see that one coming.

We had a nice mixture of different families and nationalities at the party. We had a couple of Brits, Dutch, and others from different regions of Mexico. One of our neighbors just had a baby last week, and she and her entire family came down to eat. I loved the mixture of different groups and how everyone just co-mingled like they had always known each other.

We even followed the American tradition of breaking the wishbone. I had to explain it to them before of how usually two children will pull on each side of the wishbone to break it. Whoever gets the longest piece, gets to make a wish. Seth and I did the first one to show them how its done. I know it sounds crazy to fight over a wishbone, but its a fun, silly little tradition that we had to share with them. Because we had two turkeys, we had the couple with the new baby break the other one. For the first time that I've ever seen, the wishbone broke exactly in half. So they both got to make a wish!

I think the part I loved the most was when they all did this Mexican cheer for me. Seth said I looked like I was going to cry, but really I was just so surprised and appreciative of their true enjoyment of our holiday. I hope to do another next year, but I think I'll make a little bit less food next time. I was taking plates of leftovers over to everyone's homes for the next two days. They of course, loved it!