The longest Thanksgiving ever

This year I experienced the longest and most festive Thanksgiving of my life. Lasting a whopping two weeks, my days were filled with multiple dinners, family skype calls, presentations and classroom activities. Being that I work at a hospitality and tourism school where cooking, waiting, and restaurant services are taught, Thanksgiving dinner has been integrated into the school as a new kind of yearly tradition. The dinner is prepared by the cooking students and served by the service students. The menu is prepared in English and a traditional meal is ingested by students, staff, and community members.

The two weeks before Thanksgiving were filled with a lot of prep work. Traditional Thanksgiving recipes for green bean casserole, apple and pumpkin pie, and whipped cream were sent by my mom across the big pond, then translated by Chelo and I, and later turned in to the head chef for ingredient shopping. A guest list was prepared with a limit of 50 eaters. I did my research and prepared a power point presentation filled with my preferred version of the few available versions of the "history" of Thanksgiving published throughout the internet (is there any way to know the real origin anyway?). Lets say the week also included a daily panic attack that increased with the passing of every day until Thanksgiving day itself, which was the day of my grand presentation in the school's auditorium.

This was posted in the teacher's lounge:

Speech: Thanksgiving

Given by: Molly Yurick

Complete with microphones, loudspeakers, a blow up projector screen and well over 100 seats, I spoke about the American culture of Thanksgiving to just about everyone in the school is or will study English in the future. As they always say, you learn more about your country, your life, and your culture when you leave it. Things I learned from my research (hell, maybe you'll learn something too): Minnesota produces the most turkeys in the US... Thanksgiving is the biggest traveling holiday of the year... The first Thanksgiving lasted three days and over 150 people attended. Wowza, history!

Thanksgiving was also a day of surprise for my 17 year old group. Their English level is notably lower than my other students, so I made an easier and simpler Thanksgiving presentation for them. Up until Thanksgiving day, I pretended that I didn't speak one word of Spanish except for "Hola, como estas?" and "queeee???" During these two months of understanding when they thought I couldn't, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they always said good things about me in class, never bad things! (Thank goodness!) My favorite was "Molly mola!," which means, "Molly's cool." hahha. So on Thanksgiving day I asked Chelo, my fellow English teacher, if I had her permission to reveal the big secret to them. She told me that yes, it was about time to tell them. I told her to interpret for me (as she always did). "Every one of you must promise that you will continue to speak English to me as you have until now. Promise. Everyone has to promise." And one by one, in what was the cutest thing I have ever seen near-adults do, they raised their hands and declared "I promise." I snuck a video:

And so, in my quickest and most fluent Spanish possible, I blurted out, "So... it turns out I speak a little bit of Spanish." My students whipped their heads back and forth, doubled over laughing, and then ended with a round of applause. "Como mola Molly, como mola!," they proclaimed. This was one of the funniest things I have ever experienced. Even now, reaching the end of December, they still giggle and jaw drop when I speak Spanish to them. They just can't believe it. They spent two months thinking I spoke much worse Spanish than they spoke English. The good lesson that comes out of it though, is that I had to study and to work really, really hard to reach the level of fluency that I have.

Halfway across the world in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, my parents were hosting Thanksgiving with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thanks to the good graces of Skype, it was as if I was there in the kitchen with them drinking wine and waiting for the turkey to finish. They sat me at the table and I even won a game of Pokino, the game my family always plays on Thanksgiving.

The Friday after Thanksgiving I was warmly welcomed into the home of a few fellow Americans to ingest a real Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone brought a plate to share, and we engorged ourselves on wine, corn, stuffing, pie... the only thing missing was turkey- we ended up with store bought fried chicken instead. It was all pretty damn close to as delicious as always and it was nice to be surrounded by my fellow ex-pats.

During the week after, classtime was spent making my students tell me what they were thankful for, just like at a real Thanksgiving dinner. My favorite? One student said, "I am thankful I was born in Spain and not in (insert poor African country here)." Then, as a bit more entertaining piece to class, I showed them clips of the only Thanksgiving movie to date: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Using the infamous car rental clip, I taught them how to use the word "fuck" as a verb, adverb, adjective... the works. They enjoyed that one:

It's great having students that are adults.

Thanksgiving dinner at my school was served the following Thursday, December 2nd. A few of my all-around-the-world pals came to enjoy the meal with me. First course: pumpkin soup. Second course: stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. Third course: pumpkin and applie pie. Oh, most importantly, it was all accompanied by unlimited red wine. Lets say that for the food, well, they tried their hardest... In the end, it was fun to see my school and loads of people celebrate Thanksgiving.

Gobble, gobble!