Guatemala Dia de Pavo (Turkey Day)

I’m celebrating the 2011 Thanksgiving in Guatemala which is a strange dejavu of Thanksgiving 2009 in Belize (the neighboring county). This time it is held in my Spanish School, Munde en Español. There are 22 students here, 14 of which are from a medical volunteer organization. They are going off somewhere else for Turkey day and we are left with about 12 people here for our turkey meal, which is still a large group. The meal is cooked both by students and the local school staff. We had a mix of traditional foods like turkey and mash potatoes along with local favorites. For example we had two pumpkin pies and one zapote-banana pie. We also had an egg plant casserole. Some people were putting salsa on everything. It was a lot of fun.

After our meal, we played a bingo type game where the game host would pull single vocabulary & picture cards out of a bowl and we would put beans on our own cards. sometimes to win you’d have to have a bean on every square, other games it would require a pattern (like in the shape of L). Because only 30% of Guatemalans can read, having the pictures and colors help them identify the proper squares for beans.

To end the fiesta the locals did fireworks which were firecrackers and some small rockets. It seems like any excuse for fireworks goes here. They celebrate birthdays (at least one or two a week), graduations, promotions, new jobs, engagements, baptisms, new cars, new everything. It seems we are having two or three fiesta celebrations each week. It is rather strange to me, but a heck of a lot of fun!