Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, I went to Linguere to celebrate with my Linguere “family”. This Thanksgiving was much better than last year (last year, I had the flu), and I am so grateful that I was able to spend that time with some amazing people.

I headed into Linguere on Wednesday to do laundry at the missionaries’ house and help watch their youngest child while they prepped for our Thanksgiving gathering. Afterwards, I made it back to the Linguere house just in time to watch the slaughtering of our Thanksgiving turkey, which by far, was one of the most entertaining events I have seen while in Senegal. For one, the turkey was rather large. We had found some Senegalese women who were willing to de-feather it and clean it, but refused to kill it since men are usually the one’s responsible for slaughtering animals. So Justin agreed to kill the turkey, and Kim and Abby held it down. Side note: none of us have ever killed a turkey before. The first swipe to cut off the head didn’t do anything, so then Justin had to slowly cut the fat around the neck until he was able to cut the entire head off. Once that happened, both Kim and Abby ran away as the turkey started to flop around and spray blood everywhere. Justin held on to the turkey though until it stopped moving, getting sprayed with blood in the meantime. All of the Senegalese women that were watching thought it was hysterical and we probably provided them with their entertainment for the week.



On Thanksgiving, I headed over to the missionaries’ house to help finish cooking the food and entertain their youngest child again. By 2:30, everyone else had shown up and Thanksgiving lunch was ready to eat! We had so much food, and everything was amazing! After everyone had eaten their fill, we took a break before digging into dessert. After some more lounging, I finally went back to the Linguere office where we watched “Love Actually” and I had the opportunity to talk to my mom and Bob before going to sleep. I could not have asked for a better Thanksgiving here in Senegal :)

mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cream-style corn, chicken goodness, beet salad

 

bread, tzaziki, green bean casserole, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes

my plate -- first round :)

Now, I can focus on Christmas and the fact that I will be state-side in less than 3 weeks! Time to listen to Christmas music and watch some of my favorite movies!