Whew!  That was by far a brand new version of Thanksgiving.  I think if I ever have to spend this gluttonous glorious holiday apart from my family again, I would want to do it with this same wonderful group of people.

First of all, it is a little silly that an American university doesn’t give students the day of on an American holiday.  So, sorry, but I skipped the last half of class yesterday.  It’s just too bad that yesterday’s class was actually SUPER interesting with TONS of new information.  But pretty much all of the Americans in our class skipped out at lunch.

We were hosted by 4 wonderful ladies who share a flat in Camden.  We all pitched in to get a turkey delivered, and then we all brought a dish.  It was a great success.  The appetizers were also friggin AWESOME - a homemade cheeseball (shut the front door) and homemade deviled eggs (bomb.com).  For dinner, the turkey was awesome, then we had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, mac and cheese, cornbread (2 kinds), green bean casserole, rolls, etc. etc. etc.  And for dessert, Andrew made 2 pies from scratch - pumpkin (seriously from scratch, with an actual pumpkin), and pecan.  It was a truly amazing feast.

• the appeteasers

• in case you weren’t sure, this is the turkey

• the feast!

• I was proud to partake of this pecan pieeeee…

• The Hostesses

As in any Thanksgiving celebration, there was excessive eating and drinking.  We’re Americans, what do you expect?  (But ultimately, the most important lesson learned was: don’t you dare wear skinny jeans on Thanksgiving.)  At home, you just get drunk with your family and play Apples to Apples.  In London, maybe you play drinking games.  Maybe. 

Thanks to one awesome American, we were able to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and some football.  Now, I’m not usually a big parade fan, I get bored.  But put me in a foreign country and I’m suddenly overjoyed to see Matt Lauer and Co. on TV (and no, they don’t broadcast it here, we watched it online with a computer connected to the TV).

• me and Andrew, the only picture from the whole night where I don’t have multiple chins.

• EVERYONE!

At some point during the night, we decided to go out to a bar to have even more fun.

I didn’t realize how bummed I’d be about missing Thanksgiving, but being able to have this get together with the Americans really made my month.  We all got to know each other better by bonding over our shared traditions.  A WONDERFUL Thanksgiving with great people.  Best Thanksgiving that I’ve spent apart from my family, ever (and come to think of it, there are quite a few of those, thanks to working at a movie theatre).

This weekend I plan to do nothing but maybe see a couple movies and work on assignments/group work.  But it is supposed to snow, so there might be at least one outing to get beautiful snowy London pictures!