Thanksgiving in Kenya

I love Thanksgiving. It may be my favorite holiday, so I was not about to stop a little thing like being in Kenya where they don't have Turkey stop me from having my Thanksgiving dinner.

Luckily Nairobi is swarming with ex pats, particularly the area that I live in. It wasn't too hard finding a large turkey (although finding one that wasn't completely ridiculously overpriced was a bit of a challenge). The real challenge came in trying to cook the turkey and all the other delicious goodies that are necessary for Thanksgiving in a Kenyan oven. At least our apartment comes with an oven, which is a huge luxury here. The turkey just barely fit, but we somehow got it in (and even managed to bake brie and pigs in a blanket at the same time)

So all in all, Thanksgiving was wonderful. I found all the necessary ingredients except cranberries. I had a week filled with baking. I even successfully cooked my first turkey, although apparently its head had been stuffed in the Turkey and i didn't take that out. Oops. I did get the neck and giblets out successfully, didn't dry the turkey out, and had it out on the table with all the other delicious food I prepared only 2 and a half hours after we had originally planned. Then I celebrated with 11 others, and it was wonderful.

Nairobi is now decorated for Christmas, which I am highly opposed to. Now the grocery store that I go to has power outages every seven minutes because of all the lights that are on outside. Personally I would rather keep my meat refrigerated than have palm trees lit up for a month. There are also probably large sections of Nairobi that have lot longer power outages than the somewhat (okay, very) shwanky part of town I have found myself in.

I've also decided not to go to Tanzania this year. It was a somewhat difficult decision to make, but I don't think I can handle flying into New York, driving to William and Mary, and starting classes the next day. I'm still going to travel around Uganda with a friend for two weeks, and then fly home. I'll miss Christmas, but hopefully be home in time for New Years in New York. Now it's just a matter of changing my flight (again), so everybody should say a little prayer or do a little dance, or just cross your fingers for me, that I can get home when I want to.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful. Enjoy Black Friday. New York Times says that sales are going to blow your mind, so make sure to buy me a lot of stuff.