1. 2 years ago 

   THANKSGIVING IN BUENOS AIRES

   Thanksgiving 2009 - my first Thanksgiving away from home, or away from my family that is. I did feel as if something was missing down here, there isn’t that familiar feel of family time and holiday season that Thanksgiving always brings at the end of November. It’s just another week in the Spring here in Buenos Aires, so I guess it kind of creeped up on me this time around. Not that I was paying particular attention to my birthday either, which this year was the day after Thanksgiving. Any which way you rock the boat, I didn’t feel the same sort of seasonal significance as I would have back home.

   Is that a bad thing? A sad thing? I do think so, in some ways, but ultimately there isn’t really much of a context down here for that kind of awareness, things just go on as any other Thursday would. However, we didn’t just let that happen: a fellow American and I were determined to have some sort of Thanksgiving dinner here in Argentina.

   This friend of mine, a native New Yorker, Stanford alum, Boston resident, whom I met in Expanish and who is in Buenos Aires for a few months to focus on a book on climate change, rented an apartment in Palermo (with a fantastic view of the city as it turns out) and was gracious enough to host Thanksgiving dinner there for some of our mutual friends.

   Somehow the only Americans were the two of us, along with two Englishmen and one Englishwoman, a Kiwi, an Australian, and a German girl, all of whom who had yet to experience a Thanksgiving dinner in the American tradition. Unfortunately we were not able to cook up some pavo, or turkey, but we did prepare a beautiful home-cooked meal for everyone to enjoy.

   There was a minor incident with some exploding stove-top glass, but short of that it really proved to be a perfect evening and as wonderful a Thanksgiving as I could have asked for outside of my home and country. Laughter, tears, good food, good company, maybe a little champagne, all makes for a good time - a good time that we all can share, and that we all will have shared forever and ever. And lastly a sentiment particularly special to me, something that has often proved elusive during months of traveling: to find a safe, stable, and secure environment in which to be carefree, to simply sit back and enjoy the moment and company of others. It is not easy to shake the contradiction of restlessness and listlessness that accompanies the stop-and-start of traveling, and so I am immensely appreciative of the opportunity to do so, even if only fleetingly.

   And seeing as this is Argentina and we didn’t end up eating until around midnight, Thanksgiving quickly merged into a celebration for my birthday as the night slid into the early morning. I’m 18 years old now, although I can’t say much has changed. Certainly not in this country, where it’s not as if I look or am treated like a child, but I do know that back home in the States things would be slightly different. So until then.

   I hope everyone back home had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I must express how thankful I am to all those who made my Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires one to remember as well.

So I, Sean Kesluk, left Los Angeles for a 6 month adventure abroad in Europe and South America. After a few weeks studying the Deutsch in Freiburg, Germany, it's two months up north in Hamburg working for the city's Jewish community center. After a brief foray into Sweden, I'll head South to Buenos Aires for some Spanish classes and volunteer work in a La Boca soup kitchen. After that it's back home to the States and national service with AmeriCorps NCCC. With a month of training at the VA medical campus in Perry Point, MD, it 's off to Baltimore for my first project, two months working for The Samaritan Women, a non-profit renovating a hundred-year-old mansion to use as a transitional home for women in recovery from heroin addiction and human trafficking, in addition to expanding a farm/urban garden to distribute produce to soup kitchens, shelters, and those in nutritional poverty. The second project will see us down in New Orleans, LA doing post-Katrina work with The Phoenix of New Orleans, a non-profit which renovates homes for Lower Mid-City homeowners who can't afford to do so.

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