I experienced my first US Thanksgiving this week…and I have a lot to be thankful for. Not just that I was blessed with four Thanksgiving invitations (thank you, you lovely people you know who you are). I am particularly grateful for all those people who have made me feel so part of the Elon University community within a very short period of time. I spent Thanksgiving day at Peter, Sara, Katie and Timothy Felten’s home. It was great that Katie was home from College, so all the family were there.
I stayed in Peter’s home 10 years ago when I first visited Elon, and it has been so lovely to keep in touch with the family over the years as Peter and I have continued to work together on various projects.
The day consisted of Sara’s wonderful organisation to create a traditional feast – organisation that meant each of us knew what jobs we could do in the kitchen to ensure everything would happen on time (but to be fair, Sara had clearly worked super-hard during the week in preparing many elements of the meal).
We had a light snack and played board games (a cool one called Chronology from the Feltens and a slightly less cool one from me called ‘Very British Problems’ based on scenarios and predicting how a British person would react!). We had a walk in the afternoon, bumping into people we knew, before returning to continue cooking, and to start a jigsaw.
The meal was spectacular – apparently because I was there, they felt they were personally representing the US at Thanksgiving, and felt the need to pull all the stops out! There was also a party planned for the next day so, the six deserts were not only for the five of us!! After a wonderful meal, we watched some of the New York Thanksgiving street parade on TV.
The following day, about 20 people came to the Feltens for a Thanksgiving leftovers party. So this involved an opportunity to sample more of the delicious food from the previous day, with some supplemental additions from other people’s leftovers. We considered a lock-down – not allowing anyone to leave until all the food had gone – but I think we realised that people would make themselves ill because there was still so much food left. So we opted for the softer alternative, of encouraging everyone to take some food home with them to reduce the amount finally leftover! What a wonderful couple of days getting to spend time with lovely people and being thankful for so many things. I’ve followed all of the festivities by having a lock-down at home this weekend for two days writing my book manuscript – progress is being made!
