Explaining

 

I think I owe you an explaination of what went on during my second Thanksgiving Day. Let's start by saying it was the most awesome food day ever! (as Thanksgiving should be)

Well Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, but it was WAY too complicated to get everyone to Izmir for Thursday, so we decided to have our meal on Saturday.

First of all, I should finish putting faces to names. From left to right: Rotary person, Rotary chairperson (Goksin), Rotary Inbound Coordinator (Zeynep). Then we have: Tove (South Africa), Bess (USA), Torvald (USA), Shannon (Canada), Gabriel (Brazil), Me, Heloisa (Brazil). Then sitting we have: Felipe (Brazil), Lauren (USA), Annie (USA), Riad (Indonesia), and Max (Mexico). These are all the members of my new family. :D It's a really awesome group of people!!
So Thanksgiving!! Well Lauren's family pretty much rented us their house for Thanksgiving dinner. I think that's very brave of them; letting 10 teenagers take over their house. Their house is so lovely though! It's big and had plenty of room for us to cook.
Lauren lives about 1.5 hours away from where I live, if you go by public bus. Lauren's dad, hoewever, rented a private driver to take us all to their house. Really nice.
Saturday, we started out with our 3.5 hours of Turkish class. We have just finished our 4th week, and I can tell my Turkish is benefiting from having those classes. There's nine of us at the classes: Heloisa, Torvald, Max, Gabriel, Bess, Felipe, Shannon, Lauren, and me. Annie and Riad have their own classes in Bursa.
After the classes, we met up with Annie, and went to Lauren's. Then we pretty much went crazy in the kitchen. Some of us had to go to the market to buy supplies. Then we just cooked and cooked. The Brazilians all made really good Brazilian food, and then it took most of us to get the turkey prepped and ready to cook. Thank goodness that the bird had already been cleaned out, we just had to stuff it and slather butter all over it, and pop it into the oven.....and nervously wait until dinner to see if we had ruined it or not. Shannon made a really good stuffing, and once the bird was in the oven, we had to just wait. I will tell you, the smell that started coming from the basesment (the stove the turkey was cooked in was in the basement) was the overwhelming smell of Thanksgiving. I think all of us Americans and Shannon cried. It was perfect. The turkey was a complete success!! Max almost couldn't believe what he was eating and tasting the turkey for the first time made him speechless. Gabriel also thought it was a shame they didn't have this dish in Brazil. Here's to us; 'cause none of us had ever cooked a turkey before!!
I made a really good pie, and we found a container of Ben&Jerry's at the store, so dessert was also pretty American.
Gabriel said something that's stuck with me: 'Am I the only one who thinks we are a family right now?' We really are a family if you think about it. We're not just friends, we know eachothers' weaknesses and strengths, what we all like, how we think, and honestly we treat eachother like a family too. I love it!!! We're a Rotary family. I think the fact that there's only 11 of now, has made our bond even stronger. No one is intentionally left out and we can all get to know eachother really well (possibly too well hahaha).
And on this happy note, I will sign off.

'Til next time :D
Monica