Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for many things.  I'm thankful for the position in life I was born into, I'm thankful for the schools I've had the opportunity to attend, I'm thankful for my family and friends (as cliched as that is), and I'm thankful for the amazing city I live in.  I'm also thankful for Star Wars, but that's not quite the point.

Celebrating Thanksgiving in a country other than the US is a singular experience.  For one thing, I don't get any sort of break or days off, meaning it feels almost like every other day.  For another, no one around you is paying any sort of attention to it unless they're also from the US, making it seem like it's this secret thing that only a few people know about-- which, in a way, it is.

NYU organized a Thanksgiving dinner for all the students, scheduled to start at 8 PM, a truly French mealtime.  I actually didn't end up going, so I can't speak for how the food was, but it was promised to be "Thanksgiving a la Francaise," and though I'm sure it was delicious, it seemed like something was going to be missing.

One of my friends' family lives here in Paris, working for the US Embassy.  They invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner, American-style, and I am so grateful to them for everything.  The food was delicious, and they even sent me home with extra pie, but the real thing they offered me was hospitality and a home to go to on a day marked by spending time with family.  We sat around a table and talked with their neighbors and friends, and I felt just as welcome there as I do at every Thanksgiving at home with my own family.

I FaceTimed with my family and all their various guests when I got home from dinner, stuffed to bursting, though still missing being home.  When they talk about studying abroad, no one ever says how you'll miss home when all your friends are on break and your family is celebrating holidays and you're stuck across the ocean.  Technology helps enormously-- being able to talk to people in real time and see their faces even though they're halfway across the world is an amazing thing that I am so thankful for.

I'm also so grateful I was able to spend yesterday with a group of wonderful people who made me feel at home in a country where I am very much a foreigner.  It was a strange Thanksgiving, but a good one-- still filled with family and love and thanks.  And isn't that all that really matters?

Katrina

The True Mark of Adulthood

The past few days, I've been confined to my bed with an energy-draining fever that left me unable to do most things apart from read and Facetime with my mom.  It's given me a lot of time to reflect, however, and I've been left with one giant realization.  The mark of adulthood-- at least for me, at this moment-- isn't cooking for yourself, or doing laundry, or cleaning your apartment; it's getting sick and having to drag yourself tooth and nail through it, depending on your own force of will to get things done.

I never could've done it without my amazing friends, of course-- so many of them offered their help, and brought me soup and cough drops and their sympathies as well as missed homework assignments.  But for the first time in my life, I didn't have my mom here with me, checking in on me every half hour, constantly reminding me to keep drinking liquids and asking if I wanted anything else.  She did the best she could from half a world away, for which I am extremely grateful-- being trapped in bed without energy to get up is very lonely after a day or two, and having her to talk to was a blessing.

In the end, though, it all came down to me.  I was the one who had to take my temperature, take Advil, get tea and water, email all my professors and my chorus that I wasn't going to be there because I was in bed with a fever.  And, I have to say, laying in bed with a fever and less than no energy doesn't really make it easy to get up and make a cup of tea when you run out.  It's a lot easier to just stay in bed and bemoan your fate.

Eventually, though, after laying in bed for about a day, I realized bemoaning my fate wasn't really the best option.  That didn't mean I stopped bemoaning my fate-- I just did slightly more about it.  I managed to muster energy throughout the day to get out of bed and get more liquids and blew through three and a half books (though to be fair, I had been reading before I came to this revelation).

That's not to say I think I've stumbled upon the revelation of the True Mark of Adulthood.  It's just to say that I've stumbled upon another tiny step on the road towards becoming a Semi-Functioning Human, and though I felt like death for a few days while doing it, I've come to realize that I'm maybe more capable than I've been giving myself credit for.

Plus, I got a few days in bed to just lay and read, and who doesn't want that?

Katrina