Since my account is being weird and not letting me upload pictures, I'm sending you to Alex's blog for photos and her account of Thanksgiving (which is pretty similar to mine, as we spent hours together cooking and eating). But read on for my take on the day!
The hardest part about deciding to study abroad during fall semester was knowing that I was going to miss Thanksgiving at home. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite, and it seemed crazy to think that I wouldn't spend it with family. However, it all turned out I had a great day and an amazing dinner with my family-away-from-family Pomona group, at Tom and Jim's house-- my home away from home.
Mom and Dad gave me pointers on how to cook apple sauce and stuffing, and I Googled lots of creamed corn recipes per Alex's creamed corn request. I now understand why people resort to just eating take-out for Thanksgiving-- cooking is time-consuming, and you end up making a huge mess, smelling like food and feeling greasy! But the smell of homemade stuffing, and licking the spoon after the pie filling's been mixed... it's totally worth it. Plus you get bragging rights and you get to keep the leftovers.
We brought all the food that we made to Tom's and added it to all the great food that they'd prepared, too. There were 16 of us, and we all ate until we could not move. It was an impressive feast. It took us about 40 minutes to call a cab because we were so stuffed and tired. But that's what Thanksgiving's all about! We talked and ate and laughed for hours, and we're all comfortable enough with one another to sprawl out all over the furniture and the floor with our belts unbuckled.
Having Thanksgiving abroad is a pretty interesting experience. Unlike most American things, it hasn't spread anywhere else. You get to teach people from every country except the US about the holiday, because all anyone knows about Thanksgiving is what they've seen on Friends. And amazingly, Americans from all over the country eat basically the same things on Thanksgiving: we all follow this unwritten national (and pretty random) standard for the meal. It's great. But as a Brit pointed out, it's pretty typically American (in the eyes of the rest of the world) to have a government-officiated holiday just dedicated to the mass consumption of food. And okay, family and friends too.
To top off a lovely day, I got to Skype with everyone back home before trying to fall asleep (it's hard when you're THAT full!)
Less than a month til I come home. The bittersweet countdown begins.
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