Patty is staring another meme, this one about holidays. This week: Thanksgiving.

Our most memorable Thanksgiving had to be the one we spent in the Philippines. We’d had Jonalyn for four days. Things were still bumpy. It had been a rough ride and I was very homesick. They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving there, even though it was once an American possession, so that magnified my longing to be home.

We did do something fun – giving the kids at Jonalyn’s orphanage an ice cream party.


I had brought chocolate and caramel syrup from home and our driver took us to the store to buy ice cream. Problem: in the Philippines, they mostly eat mango and ube (purple yam) ice cream. We searched and searched the case before we FINALLY found chocolate and vanilla swirl. Whew. That was an interesting store. It was like our Super Wal-Mart, two floors, but the escalator wasn’t steps like here, but like a conveyor belt. It was convenient because you could take your cart upstairs with you.

Anyway, the kids had a great time. They even squeezed in some dancing.
The women there gifted us. Big time. They gave us dried and fresh mangoes, polvoron (Philippine cookie), and they gave me a purse because mine had been stolen. I had to run to the bathroom because I was crying so hard at this point. They had so little and they gave to me from the generosity of their hearts. While I was gone, Mama Linda left. That was very, very hard for Jonalyn. I’m glad I wasn’t there. I would have bawled harder.

When our driver took us home, he changed some of our money to Philippine currency for the departure tax we would have to pay at the airport. They didn’t take American dollars. Then he stopped at a bakery and bought us a cassava cake. I couldn’t have it because it was dairy and I’m not sure all what was in it, but my family loved it. He was very good to us in a difficult time.

Back at the guest house, we had a swim and went to dinner. The cooks there made us a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner. It was so sweet of them and tasted delicious. Unfortunately, we all got sick from it (except Jonalyn). I don’t know what didn’t agree with us, but it agreed with none of us. The rest of the night was taken up with packing and getting to bed early. We got up at 3 am to catch our flight back to the States. At that point, our family at home was sitting down to their Thanksgiving dinner.

Definitely memorable. When we arrived home and got over jet lag, we had another Thanksgiving dinner with my parents.

What was your most memorable Thanksgiving dinner? You can read about more memorable days on Patty’s blog.