Exchange student from Czech Republic in Texas: Thanksgiving

Today I’m going to write about Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, this holiday was couple weeks ago so I’ll be happy if I will mention everything what I want to. The article should include several events – CCI Thanksgiving dinner, family trip, family Thanksgiving dinner, and also Black Friday.

At the very beginning I want to let you know what Thanksgiving is and why Americans celebrate it. The tradition says that Native Americans (Indians) shared a good harvest with Americans (colonists). It is celebrated every year on the 4^th Thursday in November. Nowadays, this event means that you meet with family around the table where turkey is (You can also call it “Turkey day”). You spend time together and you have the opportunity to give thanks (for what they are doing for you). We had a week off from school and had I had many opportunities to celebrate.

Because Melanie is an active local coordinator, Thanksgiving for us (exchange students and their families) started a little bit earlier with a common dinner. She had only one request; for each of us to make a dish from our home country. I chose apple strudel. You bake apples with cinnamon, sugar and raisins in puff pastry. It sounds very simple but the search to buy puff pastry here in the US was quite difficult. Fortunately, I was successful. I think it was quite delicious for my first. (At least everyone said that) :D So we went for dinner a little bit further from Cypress. It was when we found the place we almost wrecked the car. Finally, when we got inside the banquet hall, we met with all of the other exchange students and their families. There were more than 60 people. I really enjoyed the food the other students made. It was awesome. We spent a great night with great people and great food.

School seemed to dragon, but finally we were off for a whole week. You can also spend this time for traveling. One day we went with family to one vacation place in the woods north of Cypress. It was really nice place as you can see in photos.

The preparations for family dinner had begun on Wednesday. We prepared a lot of food for only 8 people. We cooked two turkeys, ham, tons of potatoes and stuffing. Really, I think I’ve never seen more food. (We ate the other turkey the whole next week in sandwiches at school.) I really enjoyed this delicious dinner and after that I as everyone fell asleep. When I woke up the house was decorated for Christmas. It was a really nice and restful time of my exchange year. J

On the other hand, the day after Thanksgiving was freaking crazy. It was “Black Friday”. Black Friday is a day of shopping mania in the US. Everything is on sale so almost everyone is in the stores shopping for something. The news covered several reports of people fighting over discount merchandise. (In their defense, the bargains were really crazy). Everyone told me that I needed to experience it, so I did. We got out amongst the crazy sea of shoppers. I needed a new phone so we went to Best Buy. Everyone found a good deal on something. At the end of the day, I went alone to the mall looking for some clothes. The sales were pretty cool but you can’t trust what is written on the tags. You expect one price but at the cashier they include a sales discount and then add sales tax. So the final price is totally different, but much smaller than what I expected. This part was awesome. I bought some clothes for winter. What I didn’t like was the culture of shopping on Black Friday at clothes shops. There were people everywhere and clothes and merchandise scattered all over the stores. Just take a look at the photos to see how gross it was.

My personal finding is that right after Thanksgiving is over we start the Christmas craziness. Same as happens in Czech after Saint Nicholas Day.

For the summary of Thanksgiving break I have only good words. It was awesome. A lot of time to rest and refuel , and a lot of food. It was a very nice time spend with the family.