Turkey Day 12,000 miles away…

Well I just had a fantastic Thanksgiving Weekend and I hope all of you did as well. Thursday was a really low key day, but Tom and I treated ourselves to a tremendous Thanksgiving feast at lunch: bread, cheese, little smoky type sausages, trail mix and half a gigantic Snickers each! I’m not positive that’s the same meal the Pilgrims and Indians had, but it has to be close I think. Friday some of us headed to Baku for some nachos and followed with a night out on the town. Saturday Tom, Ben, Rikki George, Maria and I headed to my old village to eat at my old host family’s new café. The new café is amazingly nice and I was blown away. My family was happy to see me and it was good to hang out with them again. I’ve been really lucky with both of my host family set ups. We dined on their famous “tabaka” which is fried chicken, french fries, onions and tomatoes all in the same skillet and a few beers. It was FANTASTIC! We then headed back to Baku to clean up and head to the party and the Deputy Ambassador’s house. There were about 70 Volunteers, 20 PC Staff and a few people from the Embassy. I ate way too much freaking food. My plate had turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, creamed corn, and more gravy on top of everything. We then topped that with Pumpkin Pie which was awesome, but sadly no whipped cream. My plate was a war zone and I’m pretty sure I grossed out several people with my Thanksgiving eating display. We then had the talent show which was hilarious. There were 6 acts including the violin, singing and a few guys playing guitar and singing. Tom and I had been building up our performance for the past two weeks getting people good and scared about what we could potentially be doing and I don’t think we disappointed. Jon Bon Jovi and Ritchie Sambora would have been proud. Kasey video taped us and I’m hoping to have that posted soon for your view pleasure. Ben, Tom and I stayed with a really cool American couple in Baku Saturday night. They made us pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast on Sunday and it was amazing. I don’t think I’ll have to eat anything for a few days minimum.

Big news day from America for me-I just read that OU barely beat OSU and A&M beat UT so now OU is playing Nebraska next weekend in the Big 12 Championship Game! You can’t beat that for a good news day in my book, especially after how bad/weird of a season OU had been having.

Not much going on for the next two weeks. My Program Manager is coming to town on Thursday to meet with Me, Tom and Tim and have meetings with our work managers to see how things are going so that will be fun. Tom, Tim and I met with a different group of about 12 high school kids last week and are going to start doing conversation clubs with them in English and also working with them to do small projects around town, so we are trying to get that rolling. I was on national TV last week because a youth group I’m volunteering with had an anti-drug art exhibit in Lenkeran and I got interviewed about it with the kids.

Have a great week everyone. I’ll put up some pictures later this week when I have more time. Boomer Sooner!!!