Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. It's easily surpassed Halloween as my favorite holiday in recent years. My friend Anneli described the feeling of the holiday as being pure. Christmas gets all mixed up in worry about shopping and wrapping presents and making things equal, but Thanksgiving is only about food and family and being present at the table. So, last week was a little hard for me.
I knew we would have our dinner here in Cuernavaca on Saturday (which quickly became known, thanks to yours truly and my overabundance of enthusiasm, as THANKSFRIGGINGIVIN), but I still woke up sad on Thanksgiving Day. I couldn't help but think about who was up already, pre-heating the oven for the turkey. Who would be making the sweet potatoes? What would be forgotten until the last-minute scramble? The half hour I allotted to making a few phone calls home didn't help as much as I thought they would, since the holidays in both parts of my families were pretty drastically different from tradition this year. It was hard to think the holiday might go on without me. It was harder to realize that my family's holidays are changing, and that the Thanksgivings of my childhood might be gone for good.
All of us YAGM-Mexico volunteers are, I think, getting over our honeymoon with Mexico. I recently described the feeling to a friend as "Things are getting real." My enthusiastic "These fresh tortillas are delicious!" has changed to an aggravated "Why can't I just have some dense whole-wheat bread for once?!" We've had three months to get used to the major cultural differences, and now we're working on more nuanced expectations. It's a difficult time, even without the holidays. But I am trying to remember to be thankful for this experience, even through my sadness at being so far away from home. I am trying to remember that the most influential experiences I've had in my life were also difficult at times. But mostly, I am trying to remember the prayer we sing every day before eating dinner at Casa Tatic:
 Demos Gracias al Señor,                                   We give thanks to the Lord,
Demos Gracias.                                                   We give thanks.
Demos Gracias al Señor.                                   We give thanks to the Lord.
En la mañana, que se levanta                           In the morning, the rooster sings
El gallo canta,                                                      just because he's awake,
y yo canto al Señor.                                            and I also sing to the Lord.

Our THANKSFRIGGINGIVIN dinner, by the way, was amazing.