The kids

If there's any question of whether or not the kids are settling into life here in Peru, this should remove all doubts.

Tis the season...

Thanksgiving came and went, and I didn't once write about it. However, it is my hands-down favorite holiday and I really can't let it slip by without a word or two.

This particular Thanksgiving was special for many reasons, the primary of which is that this was my first Thanksgiving in 29 years not spent in MA with my family. We may have long foregone family Christmas celebrations, but we haven't been able to lose our enthusiasm for a holiday filled with food, food, more food, and the entire wacky, extended family, friends and neighbors who always decorate our table with their smiles, their laughter, and their willingness to put up with us.

So, my Peruvian Thanksgiving was a little diffferent this year, since Anthony decided that we should invite everyone we know and plan an Italian/Southern Thanksgiving feast. That means that we had 24 planned attendees (of which 17 or so showed up) and not a single food item that is ever served at my family's Thanksgiving, except the jellied cranberry sauce by Ocean Spray I was able to uncover in the local grocery store! Instead of a full turkey with the crispy skin, the fat-filled "butt" that I hang around in the kitchen to steal before anyone else gets a chance, and the homemade gravy, we had a 4lb. turkey breast stuffed with Italian sausage. Instead of the mashed potatoes, we had candied yams. Instead of the stuffed artichokes, we had meat and vegetarian lasagnes. And instead of Martinelli's sparkling cider, we had bottles upon bottles of red wine.

Yet the holiday wasn't ruined for me because of the lack of traditional food; instead it was elevated into something new, and something almost as equally fabulous. While I didn't end up eating much (I apparently was too busy drinking wine and setting up the table with the food), I was still surrounded by a wonderful group of friends who I have grown to care about and value since I moved to Peru in July. It has been a difficult transition for both of us, and what seems to help the most is having people who you can laugh with, complain with, and just generally kick back your heels with. In a word, friends.

It was my friends who baked me a Thanksgiving/birthday banana pie, friends who stopped at the store last-minute to pick up food for what we thought would be too many people for the amount of food we'd prepared, friends who sang Happy Birthday in both English and Spanish, friends who cheered my health and happiness with a bottle of champagne, and friends who stuck around until 1AM, madly eating the last few crumbs of my first-ever pumpkin pie and debating the relative hotness of Nathalie Portman and Keira Knightley. Thanksgiving just wouldn't have been the same without them.

Therefore, I am eternally grateful to my Peruvian friends for helping to make my first Thanksgiving away from home a happy occassion. And I thank them for leaving me with all these tasty leftovers that I've been inhaling since Thursday. Nothing says post-Thanksgiving happiness like eating banana pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

And Sendero Luminoso continues...

For an update on the Shining Path movement here in Peru, here's some news.

U.S. elections

You already know that Barack Obama won the elections yesterday, and you probably already saw the worldwide reaction to his election on the news this morning, but it still is amazing to me how important this election is to the rest of the world. All of my foreign friends have been following this election (far more closely than I have, if truth be told) and are truly interested in the results. One of my French friends even texted me last night, asking for election night results since she would not have access to the information for most of the evening.

I'm not the most political of people, but I do believe that the U.S. reputation abroad has taken a nose-dive under our current administration and, no matter whether you agree with his politics, at least former President Bill Clinton maintained strong relationships with his counterparts overseas. I sincerely hope that Obama is able to live up to his promise of reinvigorating our reputation and gains the same kind of status our foreign policy team had in 1990s. (That Madeline Albright was pretty darn awesome, wasn't she?)

It always comes back to the food

About 2 months ago, I started emailing a group of women I know here in Peru and asking them to lunch with me on a biweekly basis. I figured we could try a lot of new restaurants that way. Usually, it's a small group, but this past week, we had 9 lovely ladies gathered for a midday break. As always, we had a lovely time.

However, I want to point out 2 things about Peruvian cuisine:

1) it appears that I generally don't like the food here. That's not to say that you won't adore it, but so far I'm unimpressed. Probably my best meals have been fish items (well, except that one incident with the food poisoning), but the 4 bazillion varieties of potatoes (of which they seem to only serve one here in Lima - the papa amarilla) can be tossed out the window. I also haven't become a fan of causa (I generally find this close to tasteless), gallina (too sweet for my taste), or lomo saltado (which I equate to a really boring beef stirfry). The empanadas are decent, and I've really liked some of the crazy fried things you can buy on the street - even if I have no idea what they're called or what's in them. Of course, I usually highlight the fact that Anthony and I cook at home most days and eat out very infrequently, but all the same, nothing has WOWed me (yet). Although I am looking forward to my streetside anticuchos (beef heart on a stick, anyone?) with my dear friend, Sarah. And my Auntie Thomas tells me that cuy (yes, your dearest childhood friend, the guinea pig) is a must-try. Apparently it tastes like chicken.

2) The service has generally been, well, crappy. (That's my highly educated word for it - "crappy.") Especially when we go out for our girls lunches. It appears that a lot of Peruvian mosos (waiters) would really rather we died than to sit at a table and make them do their jobs, the jobs that they actually get paid to do. In the last restaurant, Scena, I thought I could see the guy rolling his eyes every time we caught his attention. In fact, I half expected him to throw our bill at us. Needless to say, it doesn't inspire me to tip well (although, being that I worked in the service industry when I was younger, I can't bring myself to actually follow through - I always give 10% here). Furthermore, if you sit down to eat, many restaurants charge you cubiertos which varies, and covers the cost of using the restaurant's utensils, plates, etc. Then there's the 19% tax (yay government!). So what seems like a deal quickly stops being a deal.

There are a few restaurants that are exceptions to this rule, but they form the minority. Maybe it's just a Lima thing. Since I have yet to leave the city limits, I wouldn't know, but I've been told that people are much friendlier in Arequipa. Perhaps that's where Anthony and I should vacation?

Like a little Peruvian weed...

Being that it's November, our little puppy is now 4 months old. If she's a very, very, VERY good girl, we may let her live until 5...

On the eve of Thanksgiving

I know it isn't exactly Thanksgiving Eve, but I consider anything after the season change to fall as just moments away from my favorite day of the year. Thanksgiving is the only holiday devoted entirely to food and companionable relations with your family. And if you're away from home, as I am, it's the time of year that you collect all those American expats around you, and maybe even a few new friends who don't normally celebrate Thanksgiving (something about not having any reason to because they're not from the U.S.), to gorge yourselves on turkey and remember all those Thanksgivings of yore.

Ever since I flew the nest after high school, every November I return to MA to spend time with my family. Many of my friends do not understand why this would constitute my yearly trip home, rather than Christmas, but they must have missed that memo from my parents that read: Christmas sucks.

And anyway, I love to eat. In years gone by, my grandmother served as the matriarch to her three children, four grandchildren, her husband's two children from a previous marriage, and all the spouses, girlfriends, and boyfriends that that necessarily entailed. My grandmother took charge of the meal - the turkey, the veggies, the stuffing, and, most importantly, the stuffed artichokes - while my grandfather satisfied our sweet tooth with the desserts - pecan pie, apple pie, rhubbarb pie, rice pudding, bread pudding, the homemade whipped cream... My grandmother's house was never large, but it fit all of us, the adults at one table and us grandkids at the "kid's table." It was one of the few times of year that we saw all our relations on that side of the family.

I have happy memories of the holiday. Everything seems so much rosier, so much more bathed in that warm, yellow light of happiness when you're sitting around a table, sharing a meal so lovingly prepared.

Today I was reading a post about washing the dishes at Pilgramsteps and it reminded me of that one ritual of Thanksgiving that I remember most fondly: the end of the meal, with most of the family eating dessert, and my mom and I (usually by force) taking over the dish-washing duties from my grandmother. Nonnie would always fight us valiantly, even good-naturedly, but she always lost out to us in this battle of wills. We would invariably pack away excess food as she bossed us around her kitchen, telling us to open such-and-such drawer to find the plastic wrap, or go into that particular cupboard to find the right tupperware. She would also invariably try to get us to take home more food than we wanted, or to slip another baggie of loose change into my pocket. More than anything else, we would spend this time away from the rest of the family commiserating, chatting, and catching up.

I don't know why this memory of our post-Thanksgiving-dinner conversations is such a happy one. I cannot recall the specific contents of our talks and they weren't isolated - we lived only a block away from my grandmother, if you took into account the path through the neighbors' yards that we cut across. But the memory is special, comforting...happy.

Since Nonnie passed away, Thanksgiving moved locations. Somehow the tradition has been carried by my mother, and the family now travels to her home. Although there are a few changes. My mom remarried, so now our extended Nepali family is invited to share our traditional Thanksgiving meal - yet my sister (through marriage) is usually the only member present. Some members of my grandmother's family no longer participate and my mom also took to inviting her friends to join us. And, perhaps most importantly, there are no grandchildren to siphon off to a "kid's table" so we usually crowd around one very large table that my mom so ingeniously bought.

No matter the changes, it's a holiday I never miss.

Until this year. Now that we live in Lima, Peru, there is no easy jaunt back to the states for the holidays. Which will make it the first time in 29 years that I've celebrated Thanksgiving without my family.

So we've been busy cultivating our very own Peruvian family, and we're hosting our very first Thanksgiving. We've invited all the people we've met since we arrived a few short months ago and who have made our life here so much more full and rewarding. They are the people who make us laugh, with whom we share our everyday lives and worries, and with whom we are happy to share this happy tradition of coming together and eating far too much. Here's to an unforgettable Thanksgiving! (You know, the kind that forces you to unzip your pants because you've overindulged!)