#springbreak2013

I spent part of my spring break last week at my friend’s house participating in what we had christened “Second Thanksgiving.” The brainchild of too much duck and too much palm wine and too little sleep and the first time being away from family at a major holiday at Thanksgiving dinner last November, this dinner was the culmination of a revelation that with enough ingenuity (and hope) American foods can be recreated here.

So we made plans for another dinner a few months after the first where we would feast, once again, as kings and speak English and pretend that we didn’t care about what was happening back in the US.

There were chickens (4), and mashed potatoes. There was macaroni and cheese. There were green beans and rolls. There was salad and mango salsa. And there were peanut butter cookies and apple crisp and apple cake. (There was shamefully more food than we needed, but that is a different post for a different time.)

What there wasn’t was a lot of nostalgia about what we would each be doing right now if we weren’t here.

At nine months in, we are all kind of hitting our stride. The new group of volunteers will be arriving in two and a half months. I can count on my two hands the number of weeks I have left in the school year.

The hard days don’t disappear completely, but they are less frequent. And you never stop thinking about what work you have left to do here. (And you never stop sweating) But you do stop thinking less of it as a meal to recreate all that you’re missing at home and more of it as an excuse to see some good friends.