Family, Friends, everyone everywhere,
So it's been a memorable Thanksgiving away from home. I was worried I was going to be substantially more homesick yesterday than other days past...but I must say I was fortunate enough to be distracted by a stomach bug! My luck and karma prove to be strengthening (ha!), a stomach bug on Thanksgiving...I'd been looking forward to this meal for at least a month, and I feared I wouldn't even be able to sit at the table and enjoy the fragrances of western cooking.
It all began at 3am when I awoke with stomach cramps, and I thought they had passed when I got back to sleep...only to awake 2 hours later running to the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach into the porcelain bowl! I was feeling renewed after this and left feeling like it was merely a passing complication. Unfortunately I was wrong again! My mom called me around 7:30 and we were working out some flight complications with British Air via Skype...when again i was heaving my stomach acid into my trash can! So after all this excitement so early in my day I took the longest nap I could manage, and woke up feeling restored.
That was the end of my awful bout of throwing up...but I was left with a very queazy stomach, i managed to eat some rice and yogurt curd along with plenty of water and re-hydration salts! I am officially referred to as the "weak stomach" around campus and amongst my professors. It's funny cause I was just discussing how far my stomach had come, and what a strong stomach i had developed since arriving in India. My belief is that it was a little bug or something, because by 7:30pm i was able to eat a full Thanksgiving dinner!
The school treated us to Thanksgiving dinner at a little restaurant in the city called "The Only Place," it's called this because for the longest time it was THE only place in Bangalore you could get a hamburger or a steak. It's owned by an American expat. who probably makes most of his killing on Thanksgiving itself!! Stacy, Gigi, Jacqueline (student teacher from Indiana) and Kevin (an administrator from the school) all were my Thanksgiving substitute family! They served all the traditional fixings, but I must say the Cranberry relish wasn't as good as if they Cranberries had been fresh, and the stuffing was lacking, but I'm just thankful for a restaurant that knows how to prepare a proper Thanksgiving meal. The restaurant was packed with American families...I almost forgot I was in India. I didn't even know there were so many Americans in Bangalore, they've been hiding, but I guess I have been too for that matter.
So I hope everyone has thoroughly stuffed themselves, I know I have. I even asked to take an extra meal home with me so I can make a turkey sandwich later today! Hehehe, I'm going to stretch this holiday cheer as long as i possibly can. I'm just trying to convince myself it's actually Thanksgiving...I'm still rather unaware it's fall/early winter. It's hard to remember it's the holiday season when it's 75 degrees out and there aren't any leaves that have turned or falling. I'll just have a fast forward in 3 weeks when I land at Dulles and find that I need a coat mittens to walk outside.
All my love from Bangalore, feeling much better now, gobble gobble!
