Happy Thanksgiving, Nomads!
Seeing as it is Thanksgiving, I figured why not talk about some interesting stories from my Thanksgiving abroad along with some crazy stories my family had from past Thanksgivings and even while I was gone. That said, let’s jump right in…
Exactly one year ago today I was celebrating Thanksgiving in a very unconventional way. Thanksgiving fell during our Fall Break (week of independent travel after our final exams), therefore it was just myself and three of my flatmates celebrating together. For some context, my friends and I spent our weeklong travel going to Oslo, Norway; Prague, Czech Republic; and Berlin, Germany…yes it was on Thanksgiving that we experienced our tumultuous Airbnb nightmare (Here’s the link to last post if you’re unfamiliar or curious about this terrifying experience). I will say, I don’t think we truly paid attention to dates when we were booking our connecting flights and train rides because we spent most of our Thanksgiving sitting in a train station in Prague waiting to go to Berlin. We were at a loss as we did not understand anything regarding our ticket, so we got to the train station extra early just to be prepared. Yet it was during this time when we celebrated our Thanksgiving abroad. And you may be thinking that we had to have found some nice, quaint restaurant to celebrate our thanks, but instead…we ate at Burger King. As someone who doesn’t eat really any meat, this was a pleasant Thanksgiving for me. My stomach was full of French fries instead of mashed potatoes, and that’s about it. I was going to add an analogy connecting my Burger King Thanksgiving to other traditional Thanksgiving food, but I really only ordered fries and a fountain drink from Burger King that afternoon. Needless to say I had a fun-filled, under-stuffed Thanksgiving abroad in a Prague train station headed to Berlin.
I will admit, our Burger King Thanksgiving was not that bad. As a French fry-lover, I enjoyed indulging in my favorite food, and it was nice spending this time laughing and having a good time with some of my closest friends from the trip. I will say, though, when we got back to our flat in London, we only had a few days left to spare overseas, but our site director set up a big, fancy Thanksgiving dinner for all of us to come together and celebrate. Not only was this a great time to give thanks for this amazing opportunity, but it was also nice having one final meal with all of us together. Throughout the semester abroad, we typically had weekly dinners where we all met up at a nearby restaurant (I always prayed for Nandos or Wagamama!) and ate and talked and got to know each other better, yet our big Thanksgiving celebration was much different. We were all good friends, so rather than “getting to know each other” we spent the time chatting and joking about our crazy stories and really living up our final days in London. Our big group dinner definitely made up for the Burger King Thanksgiving in a train station.
Now that I’ve discussed my Thanksgiving abroad, I thought I’d take this time to tell some stories of what Thanksgiving looked like for my family while I was in Europe, along with their various Thanksgiving traditions from back-in-the-day.
As for what Thanksgiving looked like in my household last year, it was very non-traditional. Apparently I wasn’t the only one in my family having an unconventional Thanksgiving. According to my family, rather than having the usual chicken (we don’t eat turkey and I don’t like ham, so I’ve managed to convert my family to having chicken for holidays…), mashed potatoes, stuffing, and green bean casserole, my family opted for Italian beef sandwiches. Although this wouldn’t exactly be my pick for a Thanksgiving feast, I’m glad they used the time while I was abroad to indulge in the foods I don’t particularly fancy 😂. After talking with my family to see what their Thanksgiving was like while I was abroad, I found that beef sandwiches were the only big difference in their celebration. Also, I discovered that they went Black Friday shopping without me…I will say I was pretty disappointed in that, but I’m glad they had fun.
Considering my family is quite small, when asked about crazy stories or memories from past Thanksgivings, the most I discovered is that there were two interesting topics that reminded my family of Thanksgiving: golf and windmills. Traditionally, most people associate football as the sport of Thanksgiving, but instead my mom explained the significance of golf during the turkey season. As some context, golf seems to be an underlying sport in my family. For instance, I spent a lot of my summers and school breaks in Miami, Florida with a golf course behind our house, so I grew up wanting to go hit some golf balls and drive the golf cart around. I will say, I am still TERRIBLE at golf. But also, my mom and I have this strange connection to golf because for a while, we seemed to bond over it. We don’t always understand the scoring and statistics, but we used to spend time just watching golf tournaments…mainly the Ryder Cup. This seems to be where her memories relate to golf because she said she remembers her grandpa wanting to watch golf on and around the time of Thanksgiving. As for the windmill memories…my grandma said her father used to always take her and her brothers out to tour the windmill on Thanksgiving so her mom could get everything ready for Thanksgiving dinner. She said it was an annual tradition for the longest time…they would always pack up early and take a tour of the windmill a couple towns over and then come home to a big Thanksgiving feast. It was really interesting being able to sit down and hear of some fun and different memories and topics my family associate with Thanksgiving. Hopefully someday I can start a new tradition/memory of taking them to London for Thanksgiving…
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