Thanksgiving in Paris

The French don't understand Thanksgiving. Not at all. And its very difficult to try to explain the history and tradition behind Thanksgiving in French anyways...

So my Thanksgiving wasn't a holiday at all. It was the first and last time that I will probably ever be required to be somewhere, which was a bit sad, but an indication that I'm living with a different people. I had class on Thanksgiving, a meeting with a corrector to go over a paper, a required class trip to the Musee Carnavalet (very cool in its own right), and I was supposed to have a meeting with my conversation assistant. Luckily my conversation fell through, though not because of the holiday. The whole day was sort of played out as if no one realized it was a holiday to us Americans, which I later figured out was true. The Center had no real idea that Thanksgiving was so important to us, and at the last minute they tried to throw together a little "pot," which translates to "hors d'oeuvres and wine." It was nice of them, but very strange. Instead of turkey at midday, it was canapes.

The original plan for Thanksgiving dinner was to eat leftover chili from the night before and watch Survivor on my laptop. But, since my conversation got cancelled, and my friend Janet's was rescheduled, we decided to do a mini-Thanksgiving dinner. We bought a pre-cooked chicken at the grocery store, and we made some mashed potatoes and mixed vegtables. It was nice to have a semi-traditional Thanksgiving meal.

Initially I was kind of down about the whole Thanksgiving away from home thing, but after the day I was feeling pretty good. I had had a fun day with my classmates, and a great dinner (seriously, my cooking isn't that good, and this was very tasty). I also had a nice talk on the phone with the family. I got passed around to everyone, which was nice because I haven't talked to most of them in a really long time. After all of this I realized that I really have a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful that I have this incredible opportunity to spend my time in an amazing place, and that instead of being down about it, I should enjoy every minute I've got!