A Transatlantic Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving MealMy first Thanksgiving not spent in the States or with my family was spent with a new family: my London one. However, unlike many of the other NYU sites, NYU in London did not organize a Thanksgiving meal for us so we were left up to our own devices. My group of friends had been planning to make our own dinner for sometime so we had set ourselves a challenge. The day before was spent buying up all the ingredients, which are harder to find than you might expect. Day of Thanksgiving was a new experience because I've never had class on Thanksgiving before. My friends and I sat in the class, waiting to get out while our professor kept making jokes about it. When we were finally released, we all rushed home to start cooking in our various kitchens.
Now, the cooking. Here was a lesson in making doing with what you have. We all lacked certain equipment that we had been used to. For instances, I was to make mashed potatoes but had the worst masher in the world. I also did not have a large enough pot to boil all the potatoes so I had to do them in shifts. The problem with that was by the time I got around to peeling and cutting all of the potatoes from one shift, they were no longer as hot as they were and therefore, were harder to mash. Needless to say, from peeling, cutting and mashing, my arms were dead tired, 4 hours later when food started to arrive in my kitchen. Even with the help of 5 people, the potatoes just weren't mashed to the point I wanted them. However, everyone was working off of lesser equipment and therefore were very understanding of less than perfect items on all cases. Effort was very much appreciated.
We outdid ourselves in terms of amount of food. We had a turkey, a 10 pound turkey, rolls, corn, green beans, and pumpkin pie among many other things. People who had seen the table were amazed and impressed by the volume of food we had made. It took us all about 4 hours to make the meal so when we finally got down to eating it...well, let's just say I don't think I appreciated food as much as I did then. After we'd all stuffed ourselves silly, we decided to go out. Yet another thing I've never done on Thanksgiving.
Of course with Thanksgiving, comes the holiday season, perhaps my favorite time of the year. Christmas music and movies suddenly take over my life. This year, the coming of the holiday season also means that my time in London is slowly coming to an end. It's not something I like thinking about. I've a got myself a new sort of family here and despite the fact that we're all pretty much going back to the same school, it won't be the same. Thanksgiving here took on a different meaning. Not only did I help make a huge dinner, but I had new things to be thankful for, like being in London and modern appliances.