A Spanish Thanksgiving.

It’s been almost a week now since Thanksgiving day. All the families got together in the U.S. to celebrate together, giving thanks for each other and all the delicious food they were able to stuff themselves with that day. Here in Granada it was just another day. Apparently they haven’t heard of Thanksgiving in Spain, I can’t imagine why not. Last Thursday morning my friend turned to me in class and said, “Well this is the first time in our lives we’ve been in class on Thanksgiving,” and it made me sad to realize again that I was so far away from my family on the best American holiday invented. We found our own way to celebrate here in Granada, though.


My program put on a Thanksgiving dinner, but I opted out of that to share dinner with some American missionaries who live right outside of Granada. They lived in Costa Rica 15 years and now they’ve been here for 6 years. I had never met them before, but we have a mutual fried, so they invited me and my roommates over for dinner! Angela and I went, as well as some other people from the church, one girl our age and two other married couples. The dinner was not one bit disappointing and the company made the night the most enjoyable Thanksgiving I think I could have here in Spain. There was an interesting mix of personalities gathered around the table, including a middle-aged Spaniard named Paco, our wine expert and jokester of the night. We passed the time well and enjoyed feasting on authentic American Thanksgiving food, even better than I had hoped for! There were even 4 different types of pies to finish off our dinner: pumpkin (hallelujah!), maple pumpkin, cherry and one other that I can’t remember now. Let’s just say I ate enough food to last me the entire week.


Once we finally got to the point that we couldn’t stuff anymore food down our throats we all moved to the couches in the living room to enjoy each other’s company around a very realistic-looking, crackling fire on the TV screen. A very nice homey touch to a house without a fireplace! It made us warmer just to sit around it, imagining that there was a real fire heating the house up.

I was very sad to leave that night and I realized it had been one of the best nights I had had in Granada. It was a little piece of home in a Spanish setting with some of the most interesting people I’ve met since I’ve been here. It could never be the same as being with my family for Thanksgiving, but I don’t think my Spanish Thanksgiving could have been any better.

me with Peter and Debbie.