Thanksgiving 2009 celebrated in the UK.
Irony.
"Hey guys, let's celebrate this holiday in the country from which we fled!"
Thursday rolls around, and here I am, like any other day, sitting in hall, chatting with Richard about how his history exams work at the end of third year, with my bookbag, about to run off to another lecture .. and I realize -- OH HEY the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is airing on TV
right now in the states!!! And everyone in the US is at home, with their family, watching the Macy's Parade, maybe already starting to prepare their massive Thanksgiving dinner, playing holiday music throughout their house, basting the turkey, boiling the potatoes ....
Last year, Thanksgiving consisted of things like this (reso retreat Thanksgiving dinner):
[turkey prepping all day]
[mashed potatoes in the making]
[Reso family dinner]
Needless to say, the lack of holiday spirit in England was a bit disappointing. But the CME program put on a Thanksgiving dinner for current exchanges and CME alumni to recreate the festive atmosphere we would've been surrounded by back at home ... King's hall, MIT friends, old CMEers ... much needed gathering to make up for the lack of holiday warmth all our MIT friends were enjoying during their break, and the countless Facebook statuses of "
Turkey!!!" or "
home <3" or "
mm, wonder how much I'm going to gain from Thanksgiving dinner at home" ...
11/26/09
[Serving proper American Thanksgiving turkey!]
[CME Thanksgiving in King's Hall]
[proper turkey, potatoes, and cranberry sauce!]
[PUMPKIN PIE yummm]
[Home away from home - Alyssa, Kathleen, Caroline, me, Arjun]
[Recreation of Thanksgiving family dinner :)]
[Joe, Jon, me, Caroline, Rachel]
--------------------------------------
11/28/09
Had a CME Thanksgiving shindig two nights after the CME dinner. Organized it to be at one of King's dorms that has full kitchens, in anticipation of making turkey and other delightfully American foods. ... we ended up having a ton of store-bought desserts and some random foods, but still, it was good to see everyone again!
Halfway through, Spalding hostel's fire alarm went off -- and everyone basically thought, "
Oh Arjun!" while Arjun (who was in the kitchen making tacos) thought "great, I bet everyone thinks it was me ..." haha. Turns out, someone on the other end of the hall had set something burning in an oven or toaster or something, so we all just chilled outside for a while in the drizzling rain. 15 minutes or so of Cambridge fire truck-ness, we all filed back in, at which point the entire population of Spalding residents had flooded into our potluck room and were questioningly standing around wondering whose food all of it was/whether they could partake. So, we ended up having a massive Thanksgiving conglomerate of snacking ... way to go, TGDinner v2.0!
[Thanksgiving potluck]
[waiting to go back inside]
[Dina, me, Alyssa, Elijah]
[self-serve]
[Thanksgiving 2009]
