I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I definitely underestimated how much I would miss home, and it hits hard on holidays. Luckily, I was not alone in this sentiment, so we had a makeshift Thanksgiving in Alicante on Wednesday night (since so many of us were traveling over the weekend). Six girls in our program live in the same apartment building, right across the hall from each other. They were nice enough to have us all over to their "penthouse suite."
It was quite difficult to find a turkey (although another group did successfully get one!) but everybody contributed and brought something to our Friendsgiving dinner. We started off Spanish-style with bread, jamon, and chorizo, but the table quickly filled with quite the assortment: roasted vegetables, stuffing casserole, potato latkes (affectionately referred to as the "Jewish fritters" by our first-time Thanksgiving guests), applesauce, butternut squash soup, deviled eggs, fruit salad, apple pie, pumpkin muffins, cookies, cider, spiced wine, and more...
In true Thanksgiving spirit, we went around the table and each said something we were thankful for, but we also made a rule where you couldn't repeat something that had already been said. Our Australian and New Zealand friends particularly liked this twist. In all honesty, I think we were all thankful for everything said: having the opportunity to spend four months in a foreign country, meeting so many like-minded people in the same place, traveling with friends new and old, families that support us from 4000+ miles away, new families that welcomed us into their homes for the semester, professors and program directors who do anything and everything for us, just to name a few. It was a Friendsgiving to never forget!
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