A Happy Thanksgiving and Christchurch Regatta

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Here's a photo of me in a specially crafted Thanksgiving hat:

I hope that everyone has been having a great Thanksgiving holiday. Even though I miss getting to celebrate with my family in the States, there have been a lot of people in the UK who have gone out of their way to make sure that I (and the other Americans) have still had a special way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

In fact, I have celebrated Thanksgiving twice now! First, an acquaintance from the States, named Courtney, who is now living in the UK invited me to a Thanksgiving celebration with her family and friends. Courtney went to the same high school and college as me. She graduated from Rogersville High School in 2002 and from William Jewell in 2006, and her best friend since childhood is the older sister of one of my best friends, Lauren. Sorry if that explanation was confusing! Anyway, she spent her junior year abroad at Cambridge, where she met her future husband. They have lived in Gambia and now are back in the UK, in a town called Slough, which is near London, and they have a precious three-month-old son.

A few weeks ago, Courtney kindly invited me to a big Thanksgiving celebration that they were hosting, and I happily took the opportunity to see another part of England and to meet some new people. 

So last Saturday I took a train from Oxford to Slough in the morning and went for a walk in a nature reserve called Burnham Beeches with their family and a couple of their friends, which was beautiful and refreshing.

I forgot to take photos, but here's the park's website, if anyone is interested:

 http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/country/beeches.shtml

Afterward, we spent a little bit of time chatting in their apartment and then headed over to the hotel reception where the Thanksgiving meal was to take place. I helped Courtney set up a few decorations, and  I did remember to take a couple pictures before everyone else arrived:

The meal was great, and I met a lot of really nice and interesting people. Although I have loved getting to form friendships with other university students in Oxford, it was really nice to meet some people who are in different places (i.e. not current students) in life. The entire day was great, and it felt like a true Thanksgiving celebration, as I left feeling completely stuffed and sleepy. 

Thanksgiving #2: Mansfield held a special Thanksgiving dinner in the college chapel on the night of Thanksgiving for all of the visiting students and some other British students and guests. During the day, in the Junior Common Room, the college had streamed the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with refreshments (tea and biscuits!) and supplies to make Thanksgiving-themed hats. The dinner itself was really nice and included a lot of traditional Thanksgiving food. 

 

The Principle of the college gave a really eloquent and poignant speech about how fortunate we are to be at Oxford and how, even when everything seems to be going wrong, we still have so much to be thankful for. I certainly hope that I make it clear how incredibly grateful I am to have the chance to study at Oxford (and at WJC) and how truly thankful I am for the presence all of the incredible people in my life. I am immensely blessed. 

Today, I celebrated Thanksgiving with a rowing match! Every year at the end of Michaelmas Term, Oxford University has a rowing competition called the "Christchurch Regatta." There have been matches going on all week, but today was my team's day to race, and it was really fun! The race itself was quite intense (and wet), but my boat won, which was quite exciting! And it was really a lot of fun. I don't plan to continue with rowing next term, because the team practices six days a week, and I just really won't have the time or motivation for rowing with my course load next term. However, I am really glad that I decided to participate this term, and today's race was a great way to end my Oxford rowing experience.

Karen, Carl, and Travis (my wonderful Jewell friends) all came down to watch my race, and Karen even took some photos (shown below)!

I'm not sure how well you can tell from the photos, but it was an extremely close and exciting race. Also, I have amazing friends, who jogged to keep up and watch the entire race (Travis and Carl) and who photographed throughout (Karen). 

Two more thing to be thankful for that I'll share in this post:

1.) Skype. Today I got to skype with four of my grandparents! It's so incredible that I can see the faces of my friends and family whom I love instantly, all the way from England.

2.) A care-package from my very thoughtful father! 

Earlier in the week, my dad sent me a care-package full of things that I've missed from America. 1.) Japanese rice crackers, 2.) Reese's peanut butter cups, 3.) Kikkoman soy sauce!

I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo, but each of these items is gigantic! To give you a scale: the bottle of soy sauce is approximately as big as my head.

I'm going to have enough soy sauce to last me the rest of my time and Oxford and tons of peanut butter cups to share with new friends! It is so exciting to get mail, and even more exciting when that post contains things I can eat :-) Thank you again, Daddy! And thank you to everyone who has been sending me treats and kind messages and well-wishes. It makes me feel really loved to receive so much support and kindness from home.

Thanks for reading! I hope everyone else also has a ton to be thankful for this holiday season!