Thanksgiving on the Internet

Image of a skype manI woke up on thanksgiving day, thinking more than ever about the fact that I hadn't seen my friends or family in months. As I dragged my ass out of bed I went straight to my computer and saw my email box full of messages from my parents and greater family. The overall message was "where the hell have you been for the past couple months?". It seems that my time abroad has left me unable to communicate with my family. I guess they don't understand the fact that living thousands of miles away from home actually makes one feel that they are thousands of miles away from home. Thus it was time to go through the motions of endlessly skyping away in an attempt to reconnect with what I had lost. So for about the first three hours of my day I skyped literally everyone and anyone I could think of. Some conversations where brief and cordial, a quick hello to a friend or a nice sentimental moment with a cousin. Than I moved on to tackling the bigger issues, those issues being my parents and my sister. First I called my sister, who immediately signed on so we could video chat. The first few minutes of the conversation consisted of her criticizing my lack of communication, to which I responded with the same argument. After a few harsh moments of an older sister taking it out on her less qualified younger brother, we proceeded to have the best conversation we had in months. Simultaneously I got to see the proceedings of the thanksgiving dinner that I should have been in attendance for. She took the computer around the kitchen pointing out every dish that my family was preparing for the night. See the closest relatives in my family had decided to have thanksgiving at my cousins brand new vacation home in upstate maine. So instead of having to go through the hassle of trying to get in touch with my parents and my closest cousins, they were all in one room and they could literally see me. I saw the dishes coming to fruition that I had so many times enjoyed in previous thanksgiving celebrations. Is was almost as if I was in the room with them. They were all drinking wine, so I poured myself a glass of wine and even though I was on another continent for a few fleeting moments I felt completely at home again. One by one each of my family members stood in front of the computer. We joked, we drank, we laughed and we expressed emotions that we hadn't been able to share for months. If I was thankful for one thing more than anything else on thanksgiving it was my internet connection and my skype application. After about an hour of fraternizing via the internet it was time to let my family go. The rest of my thanksgiving was quite uneventful. The study abroad site provided us with a nice meal that took an argentine twist on an American tradition. Yet, we couldn't drink wine, and at one point lil wayne was playing in the back ground so somethings just didn't feel right. Unfortunately my mind was stuck in a place that it was impossible for my body to be-that place being back in the US with my family, eating real stuffing and enjoying a hefty portion of artery clogging gravy.