[caption id="attachment_414" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Giving-Thanks at Thanksgiving for New Friends "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04605.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-414" title="CAE and Thanksgiving friend " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04605.jpg?w=225" alt="Giving-Thanks at Thanksgiving for New Friends " width="225" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

I had 12 people over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night.  It's not a federal holiday here like it is in the states so I went to work taught two 80 minute classes and then hurried home to get started on dinner.

I took chocolates to school with me for the teachers.  It seemed appropriate.  I don't have a name day nor will I be teaching on my birthday so in the way that other teachers bring chocolates to celebrate these days I decided to bring chocolates to celebrate this very American holiday.  It was great.  I was very glad that I decided to bring the chocolate.  The one funny thing was that there are some teachers at my school that speak only a little bit of English they teach subjects at school that are required to be taught in Bulgarian--Bulgarian Literature, Bulgarian History, Math and PE--all kept wishing me, in Bulgarian, a Happy Birthday!

I got a couple of birthday hugs and then I got to try to explain that it wasn't my birthday. Usually after stumbling around in Bulgarian for a minute or two some kind teacher would jump in and help me out.  The other thing was that everyone wanted to know what they should say back to me after I told them: Happy Thanksgiving.  They asked me should they say: congratulations, best wishes, or many happy returns? I told them that they could just say "Happy Thanksgiving" back to me.

On my way home from school I stopped by a butchers for some internal organs from a chicken in order to make gravy.  I bought store-roasted chickens for the dinner so there was no bag of internal organs to pull out of the cavity of the chicken to use for gravy.  I had asked one of the teachers at school to write down in Bulgarian what I needed to ask for at the butcher's shop.<!--more-->

As an on again of again vegetarian, this wasn't the easiest errand I've run in Sofia.  Then it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to buy a small amount of chicken gizzards or liver.  I had to buy a half of a kilo of chicken gizzards and a half of a kilo of liver (which I think was actually beef liver--it's a huge piece of meat).  The good news is that all of this cost me less than 4 leva. Oh, and I did the whole exchange in German.

So given the fact I didn't use the piece of liver in the gravy and only a 1/2 of the chicken gizzards isn't that big of a deal.  Now I have a half of a kilo of liver in my fridge which I think I'll be tossing out soon and some chicken gizzard in my freezer (you know because I might use it to make more gravy... or more to the point, I just hate throwing things out).  So probably now you're wondering how the gravy turned out.  I think it was great.  It wasn't quite as rich without some of pan drippings from the roasted turkey but that's okay.  Oh and given the fact that more than half of the people at my dinner had never celebrated Thanksgiving it wasn't like they knew the difference.

The big challenge for me was my stove.  It's got two burners and a small oven.  So I had to think and plan accordingly for my pot use and the order of cooking the food.  In addition to making gravy, I made a vegetarian version of<a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2008/11/mr-marquiss-marvelous-stuffing/" target="_blank"> Nick's stuffing</a>, mashed potatoes and I had to heat up the roasted chickens.  On top of all of this, I got home at 3:30 pm and was having my friends over for the pot-luck-style dinner at 6pm.

At 6:15 the door bell rang.  I was busying chasing potato pieces around a large bowl which I was trying to mash with a dinner fork.  Man, I really could have a used a mixer.  Aside from this thought, I couldn't help thinking: I bet the Pilgrims didn't make mashed potatoes--this is a really big pain.  I met my guests at the door, took their coats, offered them drinks and told them I had to finish mashing the potatoes.  I added some more milk and butter and somehow the potatoes turned out fairly smooth and rather fluffy.  And please note I did this all with a fork--I may yet be in the running for homemaker of the year.  Watch out Rachel Ray, watch out.  This said, I don't think that I'll be making mashed potatoes regularly but it's nice to know that you can make Thanksgiving with limited resources in a foreign country.

The dinner was great.  There was a pumpkin pie, a cabbage salad, a shopska inspired salad, bread, a cake, homemade Bulgarian cookies and plenty of alcohol--both wine and rakya.  We ate and ate.

This Thanksgiving there were no fancy linens on the table, no sterling sliver or china, and in no way shape or form did the drinking glasses match but it was Thanksgiving nonetheless.  I have a lot to be thankful for and this is what this day is really about.  Sure the food is a vehicle for sharing this thanks but for me, this holiday is really about friends and family.

My parents called during the middle of my Thanksgiving party to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving.  (Skype is really amazing.)  My dad thought that because my skype icon was active it meant that I wanted to talk--I was happy to talk but it was little to loud on my end to really talk.  Still it meant a lot to me that they would call and to know that all over the United States that my friends and family were celebrating the day together.

That's something pretty incredible to me.  I've been lucky to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of different people over the last 27 years and I can imagine what all of those people are doing.  Thanksgiving is never exactly the same--no matter how much we want that.

This year my brother Nick, the middle child in our family, was for the first time the oldest and the youngest child at Thanksgiving in Walla Walla.  I bet as a middle child he never imagined that would be possible.  My sister Charlotte took my place in Washington DC and celebrated her very first Thanksgiving away from home.  She writes about preparing for this experience on <a href="http://charlotte-livingsimply.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">her blog</a>. My long standing Thanksgiving compatriots on W Street saw their numbers diminish this year but I can only imagine that the sweet potato pie tasted just as sweet and that smaller numbers means there was a lot more left over this year (you're a lucky, lucky man Scotty G)!

So what to say now? Well, if it's not already clear I am thankful for everyone who has touched my life over the last years--family, friends, colleagues and the students I've worked with.  I am especially thankful for this opportunity to live abroad and for all the support I've received for this seemingly crazy decision.

But living here for the last four months has also made me aware of how much I have to be thankful for the luck of being born in the US (not to mention to really great parents). I think that it's the access, the opportunities and the freedom to pursue these that I am the most grateful for.  I have had access to an excellent eduction from elementary school to college; my parents (and my country's health care system) have been able to provide me with outstanding health care and orthodontia; I have experienced both political and economic stability which has made it much easier for me to grow up relatively worry free; and more than this I am sincerely thankful that I've been given both the opportunities and the freedom to explore my interests from moving half way across the country to go to college, to  volunteering for a year in Washington, to studying English Literature (for both my BA and MA and never having anyone tell me that I should study something practical); and this year specifically I am thankful for everyone who encouraged me and helped make it possible for me to take a leave of absence from my job at Georgetown, sell or move my things back home in order to move Bulgaria for a year.

The funny thing is--sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I am actually living in Sofia, Bulgaria.  I get your wonderful comments on my blog, I see your updates and photos on Facebook, talk to you on skype &amp; gmail chat and I get your funny emails in my inbox in the mornings when I wake up.  I know that I am living here and there are plenty of things to remind me of this--from my bathroom to the tolleybuses to the Bulgarian that regularly whizzes by me--but what makes this whole thing easier is knowing how connected I am to each of you.

I laughed to myself in class this week when students were making lists of the things they were thankful for and included computers and the internet (among other things on this list were football/soccer, flowers, love, my parents, this school, music, food and friends) but now that I've come to an end on this blog post I can't help but think: I am thankful for computers and the internet too.  Man, it must have been hard on the Pilgrims to sail for more than two months on a boat to America, to watch nearly half of the people on the boat die by the next year, to not know what foods to grow in their new country, and to be so very out of touch with the world they had known before climbing on the Mayflower to move to a new country.  So my final thank-you is to the computer and internet (and probably to my friend Melly who I think in someway is responsible for both of these things).