Well Thanksgiving has now come and gone. It was weird not to be with the family, but we made the best of it. Nine out of the ten people in my training group got together to celebrate, some of them traveling up to 14 hours by chicken bus over two days. Every person was in charge of one dish of food, so clearly I volunteered to make the stuffing. A couple people in the group are very conscious of what they eat and try to stay clear of anything that comes in a box and requires that you ¨Just add water¨. My selfless offering to make the dressing was received by skeptical minds who didn’t think I had what it takes to make a batch of top notch dressing. But with a little reassurance from my mom´s ¨secret family recipe¨, that has been passed down for generations, the group agreed to let me take the helm. It took us all day to cook up our feast on the one tiny gas stove we had at hand, but our meal was complete with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, spinach dip, homemade sweet potato pie, apple pie, apple cider, roasted vegetables and, of course, mom´s stuffing. To nobody´s surprise the stuffing, and mom´s recipe, received a barrage of compliments.
We still had 3 days together after the celebration on Thursday and wanted to make the best of them. On my way into town the taxi driver could not tell me enough about El Prado, the lake that is just outside of San Jose. For most of the hour and a half drive we could see Volcan Tajumulco, the tallest volcano in all of Central America, but still Marco went on about El Prado. When we drove into town, a large sign was visible confirming the popularity of El Prado. This popularity was reconfirmed by each and every taxi driver that drove my fellow volunteers. Having seen the sign, having heard all the recommendations and after ousting the tallest volcano in Central America as the topic of conversation I knew this lake had to be pretty special. On Saturday morning we layered up, filled our thermos and set out on our ever exciting journey to El Prado. As we got closer we were eager to see what awaited us and were excited to watch the sunset over the lake and behind the volcanoes. When we finally arrived, we could not believe our eyes. Awaiting us was a green, man-made pond about fifty yards long and thirty yards wide...but at least we were able to rent rowboats. Unfortunately it was rather difficult to navigate the boats around all the floating dead fish, especially when your paddle scrapped the concrete bottom with each stroke.
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| Somehow this picture makes El Prado look good...and not green. |
I returned to site the Sunday after Thanksgiving and uploaded some pictures onto facebook that week. The truth about the stuffing was out...
My friend commented on the picture:
Kelly: Matt you are such a liar. 'My mom's secret recipe' my ass. I'll never forgive you.
In other news I received 3 marriage proposals during the trainning I gave yesterday.
