Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday of the year. It was definitely a little sad spend a Thanksgiving away from home. It was weird to think about my family doing all of the normal preparations and getting together. But I actually did get to celebrate in Chiang Mai.
For one of my classes, we have to teach some english classes as part of our fulfillments. We had to teach two sessions. For the first one I taught a group of women studying in the nursing school at Payap. They were a great group and knew a really good amount of English already. We pretty much just practiced conversation with them. We talked about appropriate language for different settings, etc. For my second session, an opportunity came up to teach a class about Thanksgiving to some Thai students studying English at Payap. I taught the class with two other American girls that are in the Thai studies program with me. We produced a slideshow that discussed the history of Thanksgiving, how it is celebrated today, what the meal is like, and some of the traditions surrounding Thanksgiving. It was funny to try to explain all of the common dishes we eat. Cranberry sauce and stuffing were both particularly difficult to describe. They seemed kind of alarmed at our descriptions. We also made sure to talk about football, the Macys day parade, and of course--Black Friday, which they all found pretty amusing. Describing the holiday made me realize how typically American a lot of things about Thanksgiving are. Eating a lot, lazing around watching football, spending the whole next day at the mall shopping... so I think I learned a few things about our country also. At the end of the class we also made 'hand turkeys'--the things where you trace your hand on a piece of paper and then decorate it to make it into a turkey. They did really well with that... some of them really went into detail with their decorations and designs.
On Thursday, our dormitory held a big Thanksgiving dinner where many professors, students, administrators and international students came to eat. The food was pretty good. Except we all almost lost it when they said that they had run out of mashed potatoes. But the turkey, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce were amazing. The Thai studies students were asked to put together a short presentation about Thanksgiving so my friend Sarah and I recycled our slideshow and gave a short little talk.
To be honest, it was a really nice way to spend Thanksgiving. It definitely wasn't my dining room, my family, my dad's stuffing or my mom's pie crust but it was different and really enjoyable.
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