Crossing Cultural Borders: Long Side Trips and lots of Potholes

One of the teachers at my school is taking an English class. He assignment this week is to give a report on an American holiday. She was assigned Thanksgiving. She has to present a Q&A session with herself infront of her class so she asked me to translate some specific questions and then to help her answer them. No problem, I thought...

Keep in mind I was trying this whole conversation in Spanish :\

1. Q. What date do you celebrate? (Uh, Oh, don´t really know... not off to a good start.)
A. The last Thursday in November.
Q. Why?
A. Um... so we can have a long weekend off from work. (We sound lazy. Avoided the parade, and football etc.)

2. Q. How do you celebrate Thanksgiving.
A. By eating a large meal with family and friends. (Yay, we sound so family oriented!)

3. Q. What do you eat?
A. Turkey -
Q. What´s that?
A. Kinda like a large chicken.
Stuffing-
Q. What´s that?
Um... potatoes, bread, vegetables, and spices. (she gave me quizical look) You cut it up really small and mix it together (more understanding, I think).
Q. Like Soup?
A. No, it´s cooked in the Turkey. (quizzical look)
Q. How?
A. Well... (how do explain this in Spanish?!) You cut the bird open take out what is inside and put the stuffing inside. (Ok, doing ok, saved the potentially pornographic description)
A. Pumpkin Pie
Q. Do you always celebrate holidays with pumpkin pie? like your birthday?
A. No, no. (I kinda laughed, she didn´t)
After each thing I listed, I had to explain what it was... try cornbread...

3. Q. Why do you celebrate Thanksgiving?
A. Because the Pilgrims came from England and landed in North America. They were cold and starving because thy landed in the winter. The Native Americans helped them and fed them native foods. Those are the things we eat at Thanksgiving. (sounded consice and complete to me! yay, good work, my 4th grade teacher would be proud - )
Q. Who are the Pilgrims and why did they leave England?
A. Um? (do I know this?!) They were a religious group that was persecuted by their government/king.
Q. Why?
A. Because they were different religions.
Q. There are different religions in England?
A. Yes many. (quizzical look...pause)
Q. What is "starving"?
A. Dying of hunger. (more serious look, note taking in spanish, pause)
Q. They didn´t know how to plant things?
A. No it was much more cold than they expected?
Q. How cold? (Lady! I wasn´t there!)
A. 0º C
Wow!
A. So we celebrate how the kindness of the Native Americans and how thankful we are for all that we have. (ok, that should do it)

Pause, note taking
Q. Are you a Native American?
A. No.
Q. Are you pilgirim?
A. No.
Q. Do you celebrate with the Native Americans?
A. Um, no.
Q. Do they celebrate?
A. I don´t know?
Q. What was the boat like?
A. The Mayflower. (I poorly drew a large sailboat)
Q. What are those?
A. Sails
Q. No motor?
A. No. This was in the (think, think) 1600´s (guess)
(suprise!)
Q. The boats were like the boats of the Spanish Conquistadors (bad move margs - bothered face from her) But the pilgrims did not want gold and silver and were nice to the Native Americans. (less bothered look)

4. Q. What costumes do you wear?
A. (Oh, god, what if we dressed up like pilgrims and indians?!) We where nice clothes, sometimes kids dress up as pilgrims and indians
Q. What do Pilgrims and Native americans wear? (She corrected my use of "indians")
A. (I drew a stereotypical duo pilgrim and indian - buckles and feathers - I felt bad for the obliteration of any sort of fact in my rendition) The pilgrims only had cloth clothes and the Native Americans had leather and animal skins to stay warm
Q. What kind of animal? Llama?
A. No. Buffalo-
Q. What is Buffalo?
A. Um, it´s like three Llamas put together and it´s black. And the head is (this!) big!
Q. Wow! Do you still wear buffalo in the winter.
A. No. There are not many more Buffalo...

There was a long pause. It all didn´t seem to add up for her... or me. There where holes in the story I didn´t know how to fill. Questions I didn´t want to answer. Questions I didn´t want to ask myself: Why had the pilgrims left England? Why had they come to America? Why did they think they could just move? Why had the Native Americans been so helpful? Why are there no Native Americans left to celebrate Thanksgiving with us? Who exactly is "us" anyway? What happened in the interim 300 years? What´s the deal with this wierd, huge buffalo creature? Why did I not want to tell her about the parades, football etc? It´s hard to examine your own culture.