Zanksgiving

Zanksgiving. That is how I most commonly heard Thanksgiving pronounced last week, but the French were totally interested in celebrating our delicious holiday! Technically, the Thanksgiving celebration began last Saturday when I visited my friend Halley Anne in Lyon and found sweet potatoes! I bought the place out, and we toted our sacks back to Halley Anne's place to drop them off before continuing our fun. She and I treated ourselves out to a long and traditional Lyonaise lunch in the heart of the old city, shopped around a bit, and we met up with a few of her assistant friends for dinner!

On Tuesday, I had a "formation" or training all day with some other assistants in my program to work on recording ourselves and making videos for classroom purposes. But then, Wednesday and Thursday were totally devoted to Thanksgiving! I went on Wednesday morning and got a ton of fresh Thanksgiving ingredients from the market, and I put them to good use over the next couple of days. On Wednesday night, my bible study threw a big Thanksgiving party, so I brought a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows! My friend Claire bought and stuffed 2 huge turkeys, and with all of our efforts combined, we had a pretty spectacular Thanksgiving for our French friends! It was cool because none of them had ever really tasted the majority of traditional Thanksgiving food.

On Thursday, I, like almost every other woman in America, spent my day slaving away in the kitchen (except in France)! Except for a quick trip to la piscine (the pool) for a swim with my friend Susannah (a very French activity), the rest of the day was totally dedicated to being as American as possible. Cloé, Nicole, and I threw a big thanksgiving party at our apartment that night for our both our French and assistant friends. Somehow the theme changed from simply Thanksgiving to Yay America. We encouraged all of our guests to come "dressed like Americans," and we did our best to look the part as well. This being the first time that I'd ever actually made Thanksgiving food on my own (I have such respect for you now, Mom), I was super proud of myself for the results. I turned out a pumpkin pie (made from an actual pumpkin that I bought at the market), another sweet potato casserole, regular mashed potatoes, a green bean casserole, and 10 oven baked turkey breasts! Once all the other guests came with their contributions, we had quite a spread of food and wine for the occasion!

After a big week, I was really happy to hang out and enjoy Valence over the weekend. On Friday night, my friend Carey came over and we made some chicken salad together. Carey is from Columbus, Ga, so we can share in missing the south from time to time. Then, we hopped over to our friend Pierre's apartment to watch the Iron Bowl- living in France can be so much like living in America! Saturday I went out to lunch with some girlfriends and enjoyed doing a little shopping around Valence! All the Christmas decorations are going up and you can totally feel the atmosphere changing for the holidays!

This will be another busy week! My little little from TriDelta and another Vandy girl are coming to stay with me for two nights on their tour through Europe! I'm planning to take them out to eat in Valence tomorrow night, then we're road-tripping to Geneva for the day on Wednesday. On Friday, I'm headed to Strasbourg for the weekend to see Susan and the world-famous Christmas markets!