Nothing like Recovery from Thanksgiving with a little bit of Karaoke

(obviously deprived of American food...this is not my plate...I swear...)

We arrived at our Embassy host family’s house on Wednesday evening; I was with two of my best friends, Tricia and Jamie from my training group. The husband was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, and works for the U.S. Forestry Service in El Salvador overseeing Central America. His wife also works for the Embassy and she met him in Costa Rica (where she is also from), their daughter was in town for the holiday and we were able to hang out with her during our stay as well.

The girls at the dinner..
They were so welcoming and wonderful to the three of us and we just had an amazing time. They cooked everything for dinner and it was fantastic. They had about 25 people over for Thanksgiving, some of her family who are living in El Salvador, then a bunch of Embassy employees as well. Most of my Thanksgiving was in Spanish, which was awesome. We also met another girl our age that studied in the states and invited us to come to the beach, but we had our swearing in party, but hopefully will hang out with her next time she is in the capital. :-)

Host Mom and Dad
After a delicious turkey dinner, all of us did karaoke. They hired someone with a television set up and music as well as drums and other musical play things for the evening. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. I am totally bringing karaoke post-Thanksgiving back to the states. It will be awesome. We danced and sang for several hours, then helped cleaned up after everyone left, then our host dad brought out his guitar and we sang and listened some more out on the patio. It was so lovely and relaxing. I will never forget this Thanksgiving for as long as I live.

The family was incredibly sweet to us and invited us to stay with them anytime we were in San Salvador, which I think I will be taking them up on that in the future. They also asked us to watch their dog over Christmas for a few days since they will be back in the States, so I will be returning to hot showers, air conditioning and internet sooner than I thought! I am sure I will keep in touch with this family during my service and I think I lucked out with where I spend the holiday.

Friday evening we had our Swearing In party celebration and had dinner at Tony Romas (yes there is one in El Salvador, the prices are expensive on a Peace Corps budget), and went to a discoteca/club. It was fun but after lots of dancing and staying up late, I ended up staying one more day in San Salvador with most of my training group in a hostel, we wanted one more night of hot showers and air conditioning before heading back to the campo. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I am thankful for slowly learning to love El Salvador and accept my job as a volunteer, but most importantly I am thankful for the wonderful community support I have from all of you in the United States for supporting me to make this decision and continue to encourage my work while I am here. Most importantly I have yet to get any amoebas/parasites/bacterial infections so far (hopefully that continues!).
Happy belated Thanksgiving, wishing you health and happiness for the next coming year.