Thanksgiving, my favorite time of year.

I’ve been itching to blog about something lately, but I realized all I really have to write about is being sick. I think it would be pretty accurate to say that out of the last month and a half, at least one of the four of us has been sick almost every day. We’ve also been dealing with Tonsillitis, Laryngitis, and some other stuff, on top of all the viruses that constantly make their rounds in the villages. Eighty-eight residents and thirty to forty staff members make the orphanage especially vulnerable to illnesses.

Luckily, we did get a break, for the most part, for Thanksgiving. We were invited to spend Thanksgiving with some of our fellow missionaries in Sofia. Before starting our holiday festivities, we had to make a stop at the police station to visit the Office of Immigration. Luckily, this trip only required that we drop off some paperwork, so we were in and out in just a few minutes. We even ran into Charlie Chaplain while waiting for our taxi outside! Because we still had a couple of hours to kill, we headed to the mall for Starbucks and to buy some art supplies (I'm teaching myself the art of bookbinding!) before going to the house.

Aside from the three of us, and their family of five, there were also four other couples and three more kids.We each even had our own place cards, ready for us at the table, courtesy of little Johnny. J I think I did my part to bring some humor to the table when I realized why my cornbread, my only contribution to the meal, was so awful. --Let’s rewind, shall we?

The night before, as I was preparing my self-proclaimed famous cornbread, things didn’t turn out so well. I wanted to use a foil pan to make things easier, but the only ones I had were larger than the pan I use for this recipe, so I doubled it thinking if I had some leftover I could make some cornbread muffins. In case I’ve never mentioned it before, our oven is slightly larger than an Easy Bake Oven, which in case you were wondering, doesn’t always work in our favor. Turns out, the top layer of my cornbread was burnt way before the inside was cooked. I tried to salvage it by scraping off the top and trying to bake it some more, but it was a disaster. The cornbread muffins didn’t taste good, either. I had no idea what had gone wrong, but I made another batch. This time, I made a single recipe, in the usual pan.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day… We are all sitting around the table and I get no answer from Alex when I ask her how the cornbread is. I quickly taste it only to realize it tastes like, I don’t know what, a household cleaner?? Well, anyone who knows me, will be able to see/hear it when I say I started laughing my unstoppable, tears in my eyes, I can’t breathe laugh. I could barely muster out the words, “Don’t eat the cornbread” between breaths. First thing someone does is pick up a piece and before she can bite down, I yell, “STOP!” I take a second to compose myself and I am finally able to tell my side of the table that I used Baking Soda instead of Baking Powder, three and a half teaspoons of it. Luckily, a flood of, “Oh, I’ve done that before!” stories followed and I didn’t feel so bad. We then started looking around at all the untouched pieces of cornbread on everyone’s plates on the other side of the table. Again, just as someone takes a bite, we all yell, “STOP!” only to startle the poor guy. After explaining what had happened, he surprises us by saying that was his second piece! I don't know how. It was nasty.

Aside from my cornbread fiasco, the day went pretty well. It was nice to be around kids that we weren’t responsible for. It was awesome to sit around and talk over hot tea and chocolate cranberry fudge, apple pie, pumpkin pie, apple caramel nut bars, ice cream, etc, while the football game was on.

I have to admit, as the adults went around the table sharing what we were thankful for, I got a bit emotional. I knew that being away from home would be especially hard during the holidays, but it wasn't until that time came that I realized just how hard it would be. We all shared thanks for specific things, but I think we all had common ground when it came to our family, friends, support systems both here and at home. We all understood that without them, living here would be so much harder, but I really came to appreciate my missionary team that I have here. Yes, I miss home. I miss my family and my friends, and I miss Nashville. I miss having a car and being able to go and hang out with my friends whenever and wherever we want. However, I am thankful to be at a point in my life that I have the opportunity to live in a foreign country, in a culture that is so different from my own. I have a great public transportation system that eliminates the need for a car, markets only a block either way from my house with fresh meat and produce every day, and I am being taken care of by people who believe in me. I don't know that I could ask for any more.

I mentioned a while ago, that a team had come from the City University in London to do a documentary in our orphanage and the night of Thanksgiving, we were invited to Sofia University to the screening. Only the trailer is available now, but we were able to see it, along with some others done by the journalism department at SU. The director of the orphanage was there with two of the residents who were featured in the documentary as the first from the orphanage to graduate from high school, a few staff members, and his daughter, who is a friend of ours. It was a really fun night. After the screenings, we went upstairs to a café where we were served hors d'oeuvres and wine (which we politely declined, of course), and spent some time talking to the woman who runs the department of media technology at Oxford University. She is Bulgarian, learned English in the States, and moved to England 25 years ago.

The full documentary will be out in the next month or two, but until then, I would suggest watching the trailer. Yes, it is in Bulgarian, BUT it shows part of our interview, which is in English. Because it is being done in conjunction with BBC and will be released on their network, I am assuming that when the full documentary comes out, it will at least have English subtitles. Everything in the documentary was filmed either in the orphanage or the school, so you can see where we work.