¡Acción de Gracias Feliz!

This year will be the fourth Thanksgiving I've spent away from home. Flying home for the holiday is too expensive and too exhausting so I usually save that for Christmas. I usually don't mind missing out on Thanksgiving since a majority of my cousins only make it home for Christmas as well and I'm not a huge fan of eating turkey. Spending the holiday away from home has given me the opportunity to experience many Thanksgivings that have been memorable for different reasons.

My first Thanksgiving in Boston was celebrated with GMCA classmates. We had a turkey cooked by a Californian and an Italian complete with spinach pie made by a Greek and Korean egg rolls. Yum!

I've helped make - for the first time - a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for foreign classmates who had never experienced Thanksgiving before.

One year I celebrated in Brooklyn with another friend and her entire family. We spent the entire day eating, playing board games and watching football. And last year I celebrated with a turkey in a bag and Ben and Jerry's Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream.

This year I again plan to return to the home of the original Thanksgiving but will be celebrating with a Mexican fiesta, which is anything but traditional. Taquitos and margaritas will be on the menu with the most traditional thing being the pumpkin brownies I intend to make.



Celebrating in Boston is almost like going home for me, but I did feel a touch of melancholy the other day when a co-worker asked me if what my plans were and then proceeded to tell me about all her family coming to celebrate with her.

I will miss fighting over the pumkpin pie and I will not get to laugh with my cousins about the year that Grandma brought the plate of Kraft Singles to dinner. I will miss my Aunt's delicious stuffing and won't get to meet my little cousins who visit the other sides of their families on Christmas.

But on the bright side, it's only twenty-three more days until I leave for Iowa and get to celebrate Christmas with them all.