Lots to be thankful for....

I know I'm a little behind on the blogging... there has been a lot going on so this is going to be completely out of order, but I'm going to try to get all of my updates in over the weekend, but first let's start with Thanksgiving....

For my first Chilean Thanksgiving things got off to a bit of a rocky start. I had just come back from Buenos Aires and no one could decide on the right time to have Thanksgiving dinner. We didn't have the day off since we're in Chile and  we were all really torn between eating at 10pm on Thursday or holding it on another day where we had time to cook.... but then it wouldn't be Thanksgiving. After way too many emails and votes we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on the following Sunday at our apartment. So we had 17 people over for our big meal and it was AMAZING!

** Quick side note... on the actual day of Thanksgiving my roomie Jess was kind enough to share her box of Kraft Mac & Cheese that her mom mailed to her. We felt that it was American enough for a Thanksgiving meal! We also made cookie turkeys.... Nola and Jess were practicing for their workshop the next day with their boys.... here's a few pics.

Jess, Nola and I with our cookie turkeys.

We pretended to be Indians.... I think our German room mate (who took the pics) thought we were a bit weird.

My room mate, Cindy, cooked the turkey... I still have no idea where they found it, because it's not like at home where you can just get one at the grocery store. We all signed up for the typical dishes and then all had issues of "well they don't really have sour cream in Chile" or "they don't have fried onions.... or sweet potatoes."  So it was definitely a struggle to try and get in our favorites, but we did it! And all 7 of my room mates manged to each cook a dish in our tiny kitchen where we have one oven, one large pot and one cooking sheet. It was a definite struggle of assigning cooking times.

Once we all sat down and had filled our plates it was totally worth it! We had an amazing meal! I made green bean casserole.... Chilean style... but it turned out to be so good. The best part was when we were all loading up our plates the British girls I live with said "This is just so much food, I feel like I'm taking too much." and then all of the Americans tried to explain that is just how Thanksgiving is and if you can see your plate... then you probably aren't trying enough of the food.

Nola, Jess and Safia at Thanksgiving.

My plate :)

It was also probably the best Thanksgiving I've had in terms of being so excited for the food because it was so hard for us to make it all and  since we are all volunteers, for us to make a big meal and spend a lot of money on food is kind of a big deal!

After dinner, we all went around and said what we were thankful for. It really made me think how much I have to be thankful for right now. I keep having these moments when I'm walking to the bank or to the grocery store and I'm busy and thinking about other things and then I stop and remember that I am living in Chile..... I did it, I moved here and I feel good and I know things about my neighborhood and where places are. I'm just really grateful that everything worked in my life that I could take this time to come down here and have all of these experiences.

I've also been having such an AMAZING time with the girls at the hogar lately. Everyday there is a moment that almost brings me to tears to makes me so happy. The other day Briana and I were picking up a group of the girls at school, like we do everyday now, and  one of the girls (10 years old) was sitting with me in the playground area while we were waiting for another girl to find her book bag and she just put her hand on my arm and leaned her head on my shoulder and just relaxed while we waited. It was such a small gesture, but it just meant so much to me. She's 10 and surrounded by all of her friends and she just leaned on me and was relaxing. It happens all of the time with the little ones, but for a 10 year old that is kind of big.

Today, I had two amazing moments.....
When we first got there I saw Little V in the patio, but I couldn't find her sister, Pammy, (3years old) and so I saw her in the laundry area and waved and she squealed and screamed "Tia Romy!! Tia Romy!!" She was being "punished" for something she did during breakfast and couldn't leave that area so she started yelling to the other tia "Can I go? Can I go? I see Tia Romy!!" I went over and picked her up and she was just so excited to see me and gave me the biggest hug and I carried her out of there and she just wouldn't stop hugging me. It's just amazing to see how far we've come with the little ones in the past 3 months.

Then, this afternoon, after Briana and I had lunch we were sat down at a table in the patio with 3 of the older girls (20, 17 and 16). We are pretty close with them, but sometimes we don't get to talk to them that much because we're always watching the little ones. We sat today and chatted with them about boys and other silly things for like 30 minutes (the other big thing was that it was like a normal conversation IN SPANISH!!) and it was just so fun. Then about half way through.... V (I can't use their names) looked at me and said "Tia Romy, you really have learned a lot of spanish. When you first got here you couldn't understand anything I said and I had to repeat everything and speak so slowly, but now you get it for the most part." I was so excited!!!! I think I'm getting a little better, but coming from her.... the same girl who asked me if I was speaking Chinese in the first week when I asked her a question in Spanish.... it meant a lot!!

This ended up being a very long post! All in all, holidays away from home are going to hard, but I think I will be ok because all of my friends are so great and the girls are just amazing..... I don't know how I am ever going to leave them!