this has to be quick because i fell asleep on the couch and it's 11:37 as i sit down to write!
we had a great day yesterday and ate an obscene amount of food - and yet, there was still an embarassing amount of leftovers. it's all good though - my co-workers were happy to get the uneaten pumpkin pie i made and my roommate even more happy to get the leftovers of that.
but by far the best part - even after all my obsessing about food for the last few days (weeks?) was all the people. holy macaronis! it seemed like every time i turned around, there was someone else to talk to, someone else to meet. i don't know how many people were eventually at this extravaganza of eating but i know i never ran out of people to talk to.
one of the things i love about living here is you just never know who you are going to meet. as i talked to a guy last night, i realized he worked in afghanistan with a peace corps romania friend of mine. just how completely random is that?
there were people who had travelled from san francisco, washington, d.c., new hampshire, denver, kazakhstan, moscow, beirut, iraq, afghanistan, azerbaijan, ukraine and even honduras - that was just the americans (oh. i think one of those was a canadian but that's close enough for thanksgiving!). there was also a turk and, i think, an iranian although i never did get a chance to meet him.
and not to diss any of the fine folks i talked to, two of the most entertaining people were last minute additions to the guest list. on tuesday night, a bunch of the "thanksgiving crowd" went to see a band called acrassicauda (latin for black scorpion) at a nearby club.
this doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? i mean not now as you sit there wondering why you had to go back for that third plate of thanksgiving yumminess (i never do, i just pick bites of turkey and mashed potatoes out of the serving dishes - cause that doesn't count, does it?). you're wondering if people here had lost their collective minds.
as it turns out, acrassicauda are THE heavy metal band from baghdad and apparently, when some of the "thanksgiving guests" were full of alcohol, it suddenly seemed like a good idea to invite them to the thanksgiving festivities.
and two of them did show up - faisal and marwan.
which meant at one point during dinner, someone found their videos on youtube and we got to watch and listen to heavy metal (think metallica or slayer, if that helps) while we ate and talked. of course, perfect dinner music.
but, it actually kind of was because we had real live rock stars sitting at our table!!!
they were so not what many people might expect. they look pretty much like any other 20-something anywhere in the world - wearing jeans and t-shirts and leather bracelets. they have short hair and were unfailingly polite and interesting to talk to - no matter who came their way asking the usual 60 questions about where they are from, how did they learn such excellent english, where are their families, how long have they played as band, how long will they be able to stay in turkey, what's next for them, what did they do in baghdad, how did they get out of baghdad, what did they do in syria.... not that it's not interesting to hear all these answers but by now, one wonders how many times they've been asked the same things.
so, it was a great thanksgiving. the food was amazing - two huge turkeys, a whole ham, candied yams, cranberries, enough gravy and mashed potatoes to sink the mayflower and so many pumpkin and apple pies we could have made serious money at a bake sale fundraiser. the people were way fun, the conversations silly and interesting and illuminatiing and the overall wonderfulness of the day was very very high.
so rock on!