Belated Thanksgiving

After all the complaining about missing Thanksgiving I felt kind of bad on Saturday shoveling my face full of food ... but only a little. Because Thanksgiving is on Thursday and all of the volunteers are usually working on Thursday we never get to celebrate on the actual Thanksgiving day but we do get to celebrate. And unlike last year where all the Peace Corps volunteers from all across Moldova came together at Peace Corps headquarters and shared a belated Thanksgiving, this year we had to split up the celebrations into regional ones with only 30 people instead of the over 100 people we had last year. For me the closest Thanksgiving was being held in Bălți by two volunteers that share an apartment in Moldova's second biggest city. Although we didn't have pumpkin pie or sweet potato cassarole we did have turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, green bean cassarole, corn cassarole...and the list goes on. Most of the guest were volunteers but we also had some Moldovan guests and even a german man who remarked that it amazed him how a kitchen of chaos with 30 people acting independently without any organization or leadership somehow find a way of putting food of the table. I had a hard time thinking of any Thanksgiving that was ever organized in any meaningful way...and in fact I think the overall organized chaos as it were added to the overall feeling of it really being Thanksgiving. But the meal was merely the beginning. After almost an hour of passing food and plates around the room and no one able to move without literally crawling over people or crawling under people, the real fun began while we all lounged in our post feast stupor and someone began singing a Christmas carol. What started out as one song soon blossomed into a Christmas carol marathon running the gamut from old favorites such as 'The Little Drummer Boy' and 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' to more contemporary-ish fair such as 'All I Want for Christmas is You' and 'Santa Baby' I struggled to think of a Christmas song we didn't sing. We even tried out luck with German and Romanian Christmas carols as well. Though 'O Tannenbaum' was slightly more successful then our attempt at 'O Brad Frumos.' In the end I don't think I have ever sung Christmas carols at Thanksgiving before but I really can't think of a better way to bring in the Holiday season. Except for maybe a marathon of Christmas movies...which is what my mission will be for the rest of today. Happy Holidays everyone!