United Planet also places volunteers from other countries here in the U.S. We love hearing their stories about encountering American culture and traditions. Alex from Austria is in Chicago for six months; we were happy to hear about her first Thanksgiving!
Alex from Austria enjoyed her first Thanksgiving in America this year.
My first Thanksgiving in America!!!
I think I had a really typical Thanksgiving! I had a lot of stress with the dinner, was excited that I can cook for everyone! Was really scared, because I almost burnt the turkey and at the end I was really happy and thankful that we could all eat together!!
I’m now over 3 months in America and this week I celebrated my first traditional American Holiday! I live in Chicago in a community with a lot of young people. 7 are from germany, 3 from America, one from Scottland and I’m from Austria.
The whole community decided to celebrate Thanksgiving this year!! Unfortunately all of the Americans decided to go home for this holiday, so only some Germans, the guy from Scotland and I were left. So we needed someone who is in charge for the dinner. I saw this as an opportunity to learn more about this holiday so I said I will do it!!
First of all nobody was excited, everyone said: “We don’t celebrate this at home, I don’t care about this holiday.” But my anticipation and my interest were aroused, so I decided to make a real traditional and delicious thanksgiving so everyone sees how wonderful this day is!!!
A week before I asked Amanda, she is also a community member and from Indiana, how she celebrate thanksgiving at home, what is traditional thanksgiving dinner,…
Amanda taught me everything about thanksgiving, so we made a menu for this day!
A turkey, Green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy and pumpkin pie!!
I never made one of these things before, so I was really afraid that the whole dinner would taste horrible!
2 days before thanksgiving I started to prepare everything!! It was a lot of work!!! As the other people from the community saw how much work and time I offer for this holiday, they started to think about it and they got excited!!! This was my goal I wanted that everybody was excited and it worked!! J
I knew that I had to prepare now a wonderful, delicious menu!!! Fortunately we had one of our best crew staffs (people who are former homeless people who get the change to work at FOA) here this week!! I taught me the rest for thanksgiving so I wasn’t afraid anymore!!
So the dinner went great, I only burnt once the kitchen!!! The oven started to burn, so I almost burnt the turkey, but I could delete the fire!!! I was really under stress as this happened and I thought why I did all this for the others!!! But then when we started to eat I recognized that I did this, because this is my family for this 6 months and I love to do something for my family!!!
We had a great dinner, everyone liked my food, everyone was excited and I was really happy and proud!!
After eating we did something very traditional!!! We went in the livingroom, watched football and were overeaten!!!
What a wonderful thanksgiving!! Thank you America that you have such a cool holiday and I could celebrate this one here!
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United Planet is a non-profit organization with a mission to create a global community, one relationship at a time. Established in 2001, United Planet offers volunteer abroad, virtual internships, internships abroad, gap year volunteering, and global virtual exchange in more than 40 countries.
