Dit artikel schreef ik voor het blog van de International Education Exchange Council van de San Francisco State University.
Thanksgiving; probably one of the most American holidays there is. Many of the international students have never experienced this holiday and neither had I. I did, however, wanted to celebrate it and experience what it is all about.
For that reason, I posted in the IEEC Facebook group, asking if anyone would like to join me for a Thanksgiving dinner. I was very happy when multiple people responded and on November 28 five other international students came over to my place for dinner. Out of the six of us, two were from Mexico, two from the Netherlands, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Germany: a very diverse bunch of people :).
Beforehand, I bought groceries for the dinner and prepared some of the dishes. For the food, I went of what I have seen in American movies about Thanksgiving dinner. This obviously meant turkey and pumpkin pie. Preparing a three course dinner in a dorm room with just a stove with two burners and a microwave is not the easiest way to go about things. Despite this, with a little creativity, it all worked out in the end. Our menu was as follows:
- Butternut squash and pumpkin soup
- Turkey, sweet potato mash with pecans, bread rolls, green beans, cranberry sauce and gravy
- Pumpkin pie with whipped cream
I must say, I am not a great cook but the food turned out pretty good. We had a really nice evening and even though we were pretty much strangers we got along really well. We talked about the countries we are from, strange traditions from our countries (Sinterklaas, Nikolaus, Krampus and Santa), our experiences in San Francisco and the United States in general and much more. Afterwards, a few of us went to Best Buy to experience all the pre-Black Friday madness. It was already very busy and it wasn’t even Black Friday yet. The store was open until 1:00 AM and I felt quite bad for the employees for having to deal with all those people in the store.
It was a very fun night and I am so glad I organized the dinner and people actually wanted to come. So, in the theme of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Chelsey, Katharina, Amir, Ana and Gabriel joining my dinner and making it such a great night :).
Aimée Kniese 