By Bentic Sebastian
Thanksgiving is a holiday which a college student hopefully waits for! In UIUC, the holiday lasts for about 9 days! That’s more than a week of doing anything you want; no deadlines to meet, and no classes to go to!
I celebrated my first Thanksgiving last year, at my uncle’s house. It took me about three hours to travel to Skokie, a suburb around Chicago. I arrived at around 2pm on the day of Thanksgiving. The house was alive with the sounds of children walking around hurriedly, chattering away about decorations. They had arrived earlier to help with preparing for the celebrations. The excitement was contagious. I freshened up in a matter of minutes, and eagerly went down-stairs to help out.
We had a number of tasks to complete. The first task was that we were to make sure that the two turkeys in the oven didn't get overcooked. While two of us stood guard at the oven to keep an eye on the turkeys, we got to work on the second task. This involved cleaning up the basement, where we intended to hold the dinner. We wiped and polished the tables. We also rearranged the furniture to make it more conducive to a large dinner setting.
Next, we brought down the dishes. The dishes included mashed potatoes, salads, a special dish made with spinach, and a pineapple pudding. My aunt was planning to serve the turkey towards the start of dinner.
Finally, we went on to make fruit punch. The youngest member of our group, who was 10 years old, was given the responsibility this time to prepare the punch. I felt he added a bit too much sugar, but the punch turned out to be a hit! At the Thanksgiving meal, it turned out that the guests loved the punch so much that we had to make a second bowl of punch halfway through the meal!
By 8pm guests were arriving. Some of the guests had not met each other in a long time, so they were very excited to get together again! I met many people who were studying in college too, and we shared our college experiences with each other. By 9pm, we were down in the basement, and my uncle(who was the host), formally thanked us for being present at the dinner. My uncle’s father, who was the oldest member of the family, gave a short speech about how each one of us should be grateful for everything we have at the present moment.
And then, (with the host’s permission of course) we tucked in. The food was really satisfying, after the hard work we put in. After our dinner, we began giving thanks in turn. I gave thanks for getting to spend my first Thanksgiving with good food, and good friends. We ended the evening with a game of Cranium. I had never heard of Cranium before. We really had a ton of fun while we were playing. No matter how old we were, we acted liked 6 year old kids that day while we played this famous board game!
My thanksgiving experience was a lot of fun. I hope your Thanksgiving was memorable too!