It was great.

Thanksgiving is a very AMERICAN holiday, and obviously it’s not celebrated in China. Luckily I’m living with an American family, so I happened to have a typical Thanksgiving dinner last week. The five-day holiday was very relaxing.

Here are three highlights from my first Thanksgiving break in America:

First, I had a friend visit me from upstate New York. She’s also a journalism graduate student. She came two days before BU’s holiday started, so I took her to one of my classes on Monday. I asked my professor for permission beforehand, and I was told that my friend would be welcome to join our class. The class is JO721, a core course for all journalism majors. It used to be my headache as English is my second language, and I didn’t quite understand why photojournalism students should spend so much time on learning how to write a story instead of two or three sentences of captions. But now I have a lot of fun during this class, and I felt my friend might enjoy it as well.

As it was near Thanksgiving, the class was not very intensive compared to what we usually have. We talked about ethics instead of writing in this class. We were divided into four groups and had a brainstorm class of journalism ethics based on a true story. It was so much fun. My friend was totally overwhelmed and told me that she liked the class a lot. It’s even better than what she had at her school. I also got accepted to this school, but I chose BU as I prefer its location. Her remarks made be feel lucky that I made a wise choice. One thing in particular she pointed out was that we had a comparatively smaller class. My friend said her classes sometimes have more than 40 students, and it’s very difficult to initiate discussion for such a big group. My BU classes tend to have 15 students or fewer.

The second highlight of my holiday was the Thanksgiving dinner.

ying'spumpkinpieWe had a “big bird.”  The first month that I came here, Professor Chris Daly invited all international students to his house for a turkey meal, which was fantastic. When Thanksgiving was approaching, I was excited to try it again. I’m lucky to stay with an American family, in this way I got more of chance to learn the culture, and Thanksgiving is an important part of it.

I helped to make the pumpkin pie and other desserts, and we started to prepare for the meal on the night before the holiday.My host family was also very generous and kind to ask my Chinese friends to come over and join us. “No one should be left alone on Thanksgiving,” they said. It was just sweet. So I invited a girl I met during orientation who comes from the same city as I do, and another high school classmate who happens to attend MIT. So, it was nice to have friends around to share the happiness of the holiday.

Thanksgiving is about more than family and food. It’s also about expressing gratitude. During the dinner, everyone talked about what (s)he was most grateful for during the last year: to keep a job under the current recession, to have a chance to pursue overseas studies, to have a healthy life and nice family… every sentence kept reminding me that I am lucky.

The last highlight of my Thanksgiving break was a visit to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. There is a special exhibition that my host family took me to called Yin Yu Tang, a late Qing Dynasty house which was moved all the way from China to America. Every piece of the house was taken apart and shipped to the museum. Then the house was rebuilt here. As I hail from the eastern part of China, I’m familiar with that kind of architecture. The tour of the house took me back to China in my mind. What a wonderful trip it was.

That’s my first Thanksgiving experience, and I’m already looking forward to the next one!