¿Como se dice "Gobble Gobble" en español?

Saturday the 20th was the ultimate and coolest collision of worlds. My parents came down to visit for a week! In typical me fashion, I managed to dig up a boat load of schoolwork to stress over but in the end, we all had a fantastic time. Bruce, Hannah and I all had family members arriving on the same flight so we hung around the airport being somewhat wired and illogically nervous (OK, that was just me). Sunday, my host dad took my parents and me to Otavalo (the first indigenous market I went to in August) and to Cuicocha (the lake where I went on the hike with my Quichua class). It was so odd being the one that´s supposed to be the expert. I think the theme of the day should have been “Communication Breakdown,” especially when it came to translating the lunch menu. But we all had a great time and after church, my parents came over to meet six of my eight sisters and brothers-in-law and the two little ones. At least they all speak English!

Monday, I brought my parents to the university to poke around and have lunch. They had the afternoon to themselves while I had my nervous breakdown of the week over classes. But as most of you know, they come and go like the tides. That night we ended up eating at my house, though it wasn´t exactly dinner (another communication breakdown) but afterwards, my host parents drove us around the old town which is gorgeous and lit up at night. It was kinda hard balancing my very gregarious host family with my much chiller real fam but all went well.

Tuesday was amazing. I brought them to the school where I teach to meet my kids. I taught a lesson last week on asking questions, interviewing, etc. but never told the classes why. So my parents walked in as an absolute and very well received surprise. The kids got to conduct an interview in English and loved it, my parents were amazing with them. I thought I would have to do a lot of translating but they had it perfectly under control. They gave out stickers, markers and all kinds of fun stuff before we left to go get pizza. Then, they came to my Quichua class. Now, Quichua is the coolest class in the world due to the chillness of the prof and everyone in it but freshman year, I was the only kid that brought the ´rents to class when the prof asked us to so I wasn´t sure how this one was going to go. It was awesome! Everyone had to ask my parents ridiculous questions like “How many bottles do you drink?” and “Where was Christina´s first kiss?” for half an hour and then they left and we learned. It was perfect and everyone had a blast. Dinner that night was an awesome steak place downtown where we all got unbelievable $6 filet mignon. Gotta love South America.

Wednesday, I went to class and left the parents to their own devices visiting the churches. After class, I ran around shopping for yams for our big Thanksgiving dinner. Grr, South America! The translation of yam is “camote.” The first supermarket I went to had about three of them and they were purple so I figured I should go to a bigger store. I finally get there after buying all the brown sugar and marshmallows only to find that apparently, South America doesn´t believe in sweet potatos…¡Que horror! On the other hand, I rand into my parents by accident and they convinced me that five boxes of mac and cheese would serve the Americans just fine. So I dashed home, made two vats of mac and cheese, dashed back to the hotel and we all went to dinner at the same steak place. After dinner, I took them to the Cuban place where I go to listen to live music. We kinda debated on going in but when we finally did, I couldn´t tear my dad away until 1 AM! Nevermind that I kinda fell asleep directly in front of the band…

Thursday, I took the day off and we went down to Saquisilí, the lesser known indigenous market to shop around and explore for a few hours, had lunch at a beautiful old hacienda, and tried to visit Cotopaxi, the volcano nearby but it was so cloudy we literally could not even tell it was there. And this is a BIG mountain.

Thursday night, we had a huge Thanksgiving dinner for the whole group at Adrián´s house. And when I say huge, I am dead serious (at least for me with the family of 9). The twelve of us, our director and her husband, Adrián´s host family, my parents, Bruce´s parents, brother and sister, two other gringa sisters, our guide from Peru and his girlfriend. It was a perfect Thanksgiving dinner with all the right food (except yams which no one seemed to miss), listening to Christmas carols and generally being the merry bunch that we are.

Friday morning, my parents flew home. I went to class after being up since five with them, came home putzed around and promptly fell asleep for fourteen hours. The weekend was a quiet one writing papers and watching “Love Actually” to get in the Christmas spirit.