Thanksgiving = Día de Acción de Gracias

Thanksgiving = Día de Acción de Gracias (a Spanish mouthful of words).

Teaching my students about the Pilgrims and the Indians and the history behind Thanksgiving Day a.k.a "Turkey Day".   It was a little difficult to translate all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods - like stuffing or gravy, for example, because they have nothing like that here in Spain... but, from the picture you can see they understood the main idea - TURKEY!  And I also explained to them, that we use Thanksgiving as a day to express our thanks to God for all of the blessings in our lives.  You can see the little boy here wrote - school, family, girlfriend (!), and teacher.

Our Thanksgiving Day FEAST!

On our first Thanksgiving Day as a married couple in Spain, I'm proud to say that Todd and I were able to eat some turkey, it still counts even if it's sliced sandwich meat, right?!?  Really, we were just saving ourselves for a proper Thanksgiving Day feast on Saturday with a group of 'guiris' (Spanish for foreigners) and other Spanish friends here in Linares.  

We volunteered to bring garlic mashed potatoes.  I'm not going to lie, this was the first time I have ever made mashed potatoes in my life (sad I know).  I was a little nervous knowing that I was going to be serving them to other people, however with some very specific directions thanks to Beth and Alexis the potatoes were a hit!

Too bad we don't have any of our beautiful serving pieces here in Spain... Todd is carrying the potatoes through our main square, Plaza de Ayuntamiento -- definitely received some weird looks walking around the streets of Linares with a big pot.

 It's amazing that in our little town of Linares there are about 15 other auxiliares (English teachers) and combined with our friends from Linares we had more than enough food - it was delicious!

First plate.  Of two.  It was so heavy I was worried the plastic plate was going to break.  I couldn't help myself.  You should see most of the American Thanksgiving staples in the picture - mashed potatoes, mac 'n cheese, stuffing, cornbread, rice, turkey, sweet potato/ pecan casserole - pretty impressive considering the lack of "American" food in Linares.

Walking home from our Thanksgiving feast to see a big Christmas tree lit up in front of the main department store, El Corte Inglés (also in Plaza de Ayuntamiento)... I love the holidays!


We definitely have a LOT to be thankful for this year!  God is good. Celebrating Thanksgiving here in Spain with new friends is a memory we will cherish forever.