After a month of winter wonders, my feet are back on the iceless terra firma of Mexico.  Very simply, it was a great holiday with my family.  I got well fed by my father, pounced on by my niece and went shopping by my mom.  My brother wore the soccer jerseys that I brought him almost every day. 

Christmas dinner was incredible (as always), but it had some mean competition.  One day, to use up leftovers, my dad united Christmas tree pasta with alien pasta.  I have never seen a cooler combination. 

I have probably arrived back as the most patriotic looking canadiense in the country.  To honour my gift requests, my parents adorned me with “Canadian” clothing- a warm knitted jacket, hat, scarf, mitts (with the string), all featuring the maple leaf.  If I wore them all at once I would definitely scream tourista (see photo).  But a fashionable one at least.   

The final thing I noticed is that Xempa is famous abroad.  The cell phone company Telus’ new advertising campaign features bunnies that look exactly like mine, they cracked me up every time I saw them.  Click here to see the videos:

http://www.telusmobility.com/coolstuff/advertising.shtml

We have had an unnatural fear of our oven.  

At the beginning of the year, before we had really tested out our cooking facilities, our American friends Jonah and Kim described in great detail and with elaborate actions how they had a small explosion and singed Jonah’s eyebrows by simply trying to light the gas.  I wouldn’t call us skittish, but after their creative rendition of the oven event, we didn’t try to use ours.  It seemed that if level headed people like them could detonate that innocent looking appliance, then we were doomed to blow up the apartment.  

So, we used the stovetop while the oven loomed ominously below. 

On Friday, all I could think about was the fact that it would be Thanksgiving weekend in Canada.  The feast of gobble gobbles, with the turkey, stuffing, turnip, squash, pumpkin pie… and my family.  I always loved going home to visit at that time.  To ease this bout of homesickness, I decided that we should celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico.  That evening I went to the supermarket and found a lonely squash amongst the pumpkins.  I took that to be a sign that I had to make the dinner. 

When I started searching for things to put the meal together, it was looking like we would be having KFC with salsa, but through another miracle, I found an imported package of gravy.  The last challenge was a face off with the oven.  I bought a new lighter, sliced my squash in half and made sure that my roommates were away from the kitchen.  I ignited the lighter, held my breath, and turned on the gas.  And it lit.  The moment was so anti-climatic that I wished there had been just a little flare-up, to justify avoiding it for two months.   

Eventually, the whole meal came together, except for the dressing (maybe next year) and the pie- we made a compromise with an apple coffee cake instead.

I love Mexican food and the way of life here.  I often find myself trying to balance my Canadian way of doing things by trying out Mexican methods.  I’m still pretty young, but I worry that I could become stuck in some of my old ways, at the expense of a great cultural experience.  I think I’ve done a pretty good job of balancing my two worlds… but Thanksgiving is here to stay.