The Day of Action of Thanks

I'll have to admit that I have been a lazy Thanksgiving participant.  It has been easy to ride over to our relatives' homes where my mom and others have organized an amazing feast.  And then to sit around and talk while they cleaned it up as well.

Our context this year has made Thanksgiving a very different kind of experience.  For starters, it's a holiday celebrated in the U.S. and a handful of other places, so Thursday was a working day.  And the traditional foods and traditional family gatherings are far away as well.

The U.S. staff of our team decided to invite our Nicaraguan national staff to a Thanksgiving experience, to the extant that it was possible to recreate here.  My job was to prepare my mom's rolls (or use my mom's recipe for rolls to make something bread-like) and to prepare a mini-lesson on Thanksgiving to explain the event.  Ariane, Andrew, and Rebekah divided up other dishes, and PriceSmart (owned by Costco) helped us out with some pies.  All told, it was a great time together with the team and a few extra guests.  And it was a significant amount of work as well.  Musing a little about the holiday's name as it is in Spanish (el Día de Acción de Gracias - the Day of Action of Thanks), it makes me think about the effort and action of giving.  It makes me thankful for all those taken-for-granted efforts of others that I have enjoyed and not always fully appreciated.  So, thanks Mom and relatives for all thanksgiving meals of in the past, thanks to Ariane, Andrew, and Rebekah for their work to get today ready, and thanks to Yolanda, Liseth, Dency, and others for helping in dozens of ways today as well. I have much to be thankful for.

A few pictures from the day: