...to sharing some Turkey Day love!

So, CVA Las Mercedes - in staying true to the AMERICAN part of its being a Venezuelan-American Center - has no classes on Thursday and Friday, a nod to the Thanksgiving holiday.  Of course, given that there was no Pilgrim/Indian Kodak moment 400 years ago in South America (the Spanish invaders mostly steamrolled over all the natives), most Venezuelans are relatively uninformed about the holiday.  As the resident gringa, I was tasked with bringing Thanksgiving to the CVA.

It was easy to do with the kiddies.  For the kids' levels, I typed up instructions for a long-revered Thanksgiving craft...*drumroll*...THE HAND TURKEY!  That's right, you know you remember it: place your hand on a piece of paper, trace it, decorate it, and voila! Turkey.  For some of the more advanced students, my instructions dictated that they write what they were thankful for on the turkey itself.  I was totally blown away by the drawings these kids came up with.  Here I was expecting little brown hands, with red, yellow, and orange feathers.  Instead, these kids went crazy with colors and embellishments!  There was probably a little confusion about what Thanksgiving itself was (I don't know how many teachers bothered to explain much about the holiday, or how many teachers knew much about the holiday themselves).  That may explain some of the turkeys which had Christmas hats and presents scattered around. :-)  There was also a bit of a linguistic confusion: pavo real - literally 'royal turkey' - is Spanish for peacock.  These little hand turkeys look a bit like peacocks.  That would explain the green, purple, and blue 'turkeys'.  Didn't matter if they were purple or Santa Claus with feathers - they were SO GOOD!  One of my personal favorites was a turkey where the student wrote on the fingers what he was grateful for.  The whole turkey was green except for the pinkie finger, which was colored red with hearts (here he'd written 'girlfriend').  Instead of gushing even more, I'll just post some pictures.

Spent all morning posting these up like a proud mama

These kids are so creative!

For the profes and some of the advance classes, I put together a mini-presentation for today, for the half-hour we get between classes at noon.  It consisted of a short Powerpoint, a mini-activity, and a potluck snack.  The Powerpoint went over a brief history of Thanksgiving (por ejemplo, did you know that it was Lincoln that made Thanksgiving a national holiday?), and then explained what a present-day Thanksgiving looked like (food, family, football, shopping, etc.)  It was really interesting to find out what Venezuelans had heard about, and what was new.  For example, EVERYONE here knows about Black Friday (apparently people will work trips to the US around Black Friday to take advantage of the shopping), but few people had heard about how tons of Americans also set aside a few hours to watch some of the biggest football rivalries play on Tgiving Day.  Oh, and the presidential turkey pardon got some laughs as well :-)

The activity for the profes consisted of taking some construction-paper feathers that I'd cut out and writing what they were thankful for on them - then we pasted them around a massive clip-art turkey and posted that on the bulletin board as the profes' contribution to the Thanksgiving celebration!  

I'm thankful for: Family, Friends and New Experiences

 
Add in some delicious noms with everything from pan de jamon (a Christmas specialty here - basically yummy bread with bits of ham, olives, and raisins tucked up in it...sounds crazy but it's scrumptious, I promise) to platano chips, and you have a perfect midday snack.


For the big day itself, I've been graciously let off work by CVA El Centro, so I'm busing up from Caracas to Valencia, then from Valencia up to Chichiriviche to join the rest of my gringo compadres for a nice long beach weekend.  Still not 1000% sure that I know how to get there all the way, but vamos a ver.  All in the spirit of aventura, right?  Can't wait to see mis companeros - we haven't seen each other since orientation at the beginning of the month!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rainy season decides to end a few days early and doesn't intrude on our surf and sand. 

Besos to all those back home - a very happy Thanksgiving!