Mexico Medical Student |

(drafted, completed later, and backposted to the original date)

Happy Turkey Day! Mexico obviously doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving (although they recognize that Americans celebrate dia de pavo, missing the point of the holiday), so this is definitely a first. In addition, this is one of perhaps 3 Thanksgivings in my entire life that I didn’t celebrate it with my family. The only exceptions have been when I lived in DC/Reston and one other time. I guess I always lived close enough where not coming home wasn’t a good excuse and I didn’t have spectacular competing plans.

Now, as has been the case for a couple of years, we’ve sometimes needed to do things as our own family proper, and we rang in our first solo Thanksgiving with a roast chicken! Yes, my serotonin levels were artificially low due to no turkey this year since there is no way to get a frickin’ turkey unless you buy this huge monstrosity of a bird that is overkill for 2-3 people (not to mention that won’t fit in our “E-Z Bake”-sized oven). You can’t just get a breast from the frozen section or even from the butcher (at least not the ones in the supermarket; I wasn’t brave or free enough to look elsewhere). Having a ready-to-bake turkey loaf in a foil box with a gravy packet is most definitely an alien item here. Anything that means convenience is not to be found, since people here have all sorts of time since they don’t really value long work hours. If one has disposable income, it’s not wasted on convenience food, it’s spent on someone to do the work for you. Seeing as we had neither time nor money to burn, we had chicken.

I had J over so we could study, so that was a good time. She was also missing her family, so it worked perfectly. There was food (mostly carb-y sides of course, but fresh steamed green beans, too), football, and studying. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!