Mango House Thanksgiving

Pretty much as soon as we signed the lease on the Mango House at the end of first semester it was decided that we would host Thanksgiving as most of our friends had settled into Condo/Apartment style housing and we actually got ahold of a house.  In the early days of planning, the Thanksgiving guest list was about a dozen, but as we progressed through our studies, new friendships were forged and therefore the guest list grew.  As Thanksgiving drew closer we groaned in horror upon realizing that the list was now upwards of thirty people!

Michelle and Conner

The Mango House was in charge of getting and preparing the turkeys....we bought and cooked two birds although one was no good as we believe that it had been thawed before (probably on the docks) and refrozen; the other (a good old butterball) was just fine.  Everyone got at least a little piece of turkey and thankfully there was enough other food present that no one went away hungry.  Even with a house packed full of people we had a grand time and Conner was the guest of honor as he had been cleared the day before of a previous false diagnoses of adrenal cancer.  Talk about having something to be thankful for! 


Anna and I dressed in our Halloween Indian costumes again as it seemed appropriate to honor our heritage on Thanksgiving since Thanksgiving wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the original Indian's generosity to the Pilgrims at Plymouth.  I think it was the doeskin dress that revealed my hidden talents at ladder golf!  Ladder golf is a game newly introduced to Cramer and I here in the Caribbean, and after playing it once at Reggae Beach, Cramer came right home and jogged off to the local hardware store to get some pipe to build his own set.  The game consists of two teams of two throwing two golf balls that are tied together with rope at a three rung pvc ladder.  If the golf balls wrap around the top rung 3 points are awarded, second rung gives 2 points, and the bottom rung gives 1 point.  The first team to reach 21 points wins the match, but 21 must be gotten exactly; a team goes over 21 and they go back to 9 points.  We have had many entertaining evenings with the ladder golf set but normally I'm not quite as accurate as I was on Thanksgiving.  Becca has informed me that ladder golf is derived from a warriors training where the golf balls represent metal balls that were thrown with the object of tangling an opponent's legs.  Once I knew this, the fact that I dominated the game on Thanksgiving makes prefect sense.  My warrior spirt was awakened by the doeskin as you can plainly see by the picture above.  

Missing from our festivities was the wonderful fall weather and colors I'm come to expect.  It is strange to know that time is passing only because I see the days on the calendar ticking off and not feel the passing in my bones as the seasons change.  Cramer and I certainly are making good memories here, but our time on St. Kitts is spent knowing home is going to be somewhere else; somewhere with seasons for sure.  






I hope your Thanksgivings were as fun-filled as ours,
Cramer, Rach, and Conner