Turkey-Less Turkey Day

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, or in Spanish - el día de acción de gracias. And it turned out better than I could have ever expected.

Tuesday I had a breakdown. A big childish American breakdown. There I was whining and crying like a little baby in bed to my housemate Jessie about how Thanksgiving just wasn't going to be the same. How much I missed my family. How I didn't know how to make any of the food because so many ingredients were missing. Nothing was going to be the same.


NO turkey. really expensive, and few available.
NO boxes of stuffing mix.
NO green bean casserole. No campbell's condensed mushroom soup or the can of french onion crunchy topper.
NO cranberry sauce. No canned sauce, no cranberries.
NO pumpkin pie. No evaporated milk. No canned pumpkin.

But Jessie, being the brilliant English lady she is - told me, yah katie, it's not going to be the same. You are in Argentina. Make what you can, what you want to, or just realize that it's not going to be the same and embrace it and we'll order sushi. She was pushing for the sushi. She almost reminded me I was being ridiculous because I'd be seeing my family in just a few weeks.

In the end I got my act together, and I'm really glad I did. Because in the end, there was something really special about this Thanksgiving.

I really felt close to the ingredients. For the first time in my life, I cut and baked the bread to make the stuffing bread cubes. I had to buy pecans in their shells. I deshelled pecans - and now I understand why whole pecans are so expensive. It's hard getting those suckers out without breaking them. I used my grandma's recipe for sweet potatoes - but there was no nice 29 oz can of yams to buy at the store. We peeled and baked and mashed.

It was really really lovely. I think that's something that's going to stick with me in my Thanksgivings to come. Everything came out so much healthier and more delicious because every had to be fresh - Argentina isn't huge on boxed and canned foods.

And for the first time I stuffed a bird. And cooked it. Though it was a chicken, not a turkey which received a fair amount of grumbles from the expats. jaja.

And in the end it ended up being the largest thanksgiving group I had ever cooked for. There were eight of us: Jessie, Myself, my australian housemate Rhys, his American girlfriend Jade, their American friend Miguel, and three kids doing the abroad program here now that I did two years ago.

The first cheers - "To finding family wherever you are".

And when we went around the table, all saying what we were thankful for - Jessie said "for my first thanksgiving, and that katie didn't take me up on my offer to just order sushi".

Trip to the Embassy

Back Story: A week and a half ago, I made the mistake that many, many travelers make here. Unlike the ATMs in the United States, where you simply swipe your card to take out money, the Argentine ATMS eat your card. You slide it into the machine and it holds on to it. It eats it. Then you take out your money, and it says "would you like to make another transaction?" and you say "no" and then you get your card back. Well I finally forgot. I walked away without getting my card back, and am not debit-card-less. No biggie, no worries, but it meant my brilliant mother had to send me money through the Western Union to pick up in the embassy. End back story.


I felt like a real expat walking up to the building. I had never been inside an embassy before, let alone the US embassy in Argentina. Then I turned the corner to the entrance and was amazed by the lines. There were lines of people of more than half a city block of length- not single file - waiting just to get inside the building. The sign in front said "9:30 interviews". It was 10:30 when I arrived.
Then I spoke to a man behind one-way glass - kinda creepy handing your passport over to a person you can't see - and told him what I was there for, ushered in by another security guard, turned in all my electronics and entered to find the area designated for Americans.
There are two sections for inquiries. The area for Argentinians and the area for US citizens. Just like immigrations at the airport, we had our own lines and our own windows. Only in the Embassy, the US citizens get their own sectioned-off area with chairs while the Argentines got to stand in lines for their windows to give the US government their fingerprints. Our section happened to also be right next to the little coffee and goodies section. I took advantage and consumed an overpriced chocolate muffin and café cortado.

One of the women who was there in the seated section had had her passport stolen twice in the few weeks she had been in Buenos Aires. She came with all the necessary papers because she had already learned well the process. The woman who attended her said, "you'll never forget Buenos Aires will you?" and they chuckled.

Random Amalgam of Things Happen-ed/ing

Updates, updates, funny things:

Funny Story: Yesterday while walking down ave. 9 de julio, water started to fall from above and I didn't think anything of it. It's very common here, especially during the summer, for water droplets or splashes to come down from apartments and offices above as air conditioners drip water, or people clean their balconies, etc. It's a normal hazard of the streets.
But it seems liked a lot of water and I heard a man grunting so I looked up and saw a man pissing off of his balcony. I'm glad I bothered to move and not get hit! I could've gotten angry but it just seemed like one of those ridiculous things of city life. A bunch of buddies got wasted saturday night, this guy woke up at 2pm and decided to pee off the balcony without concern for hitting people with his urine. Oh city life, it makes me laugh.

Halloween: went by completely uneventfully considering it doesn't exist here. I really missed Halloween, but no, no costumes or costume party for me.

The semester is coming to a close - I have each class only once more - and then off to California for Christmas (15th - 29th)! wahooooo. I'm really looking forward to finishing my classes and starting the field research portion of my fellowship. And super excited to bake cookies and cinnamon buns and see my family and be merry with themm. The only thing is the warm weather is making it very difficult for me to get in the Christmas spirit but I'm sure when we round the corner into December it'll hit me.

Thanksgiving is coming up! I'm still not sure what I'll be able to successfully produce of traditional Thanksgiving eats - we'll just have to wait and see. But I know cranberries aren't going to be on the menu, and neither is the french cut green bean casserole with fried crispy onions on top... I'm also doubting the turkey. And the pumpkin pie (I've never made one not with pumpkin from a can before...). But Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, some sort of salad, stuffing, some sort of vegetable? will certainly be on the menu.

It's spring in Argentina. And it's absolutely breathtaking. The weather is so lovely, and it just happened overnight it seems. It's impossible not to be in good spirits all the time, anything bothersome just rolls right off of you. Walking around the city is lovely, and the streets are full of these trees with beautiful purple blossoms.It feels great to be alive.