1st Thanksgiving in Germany

Well, actually its not my first Thanksgiving in Germany. Last year I spent the Thursday with my family in the States before jumping on the plane and heading to Germany just in time for the festivities here. It was a year ago that I came over to find an apartment for us to live in. While Thanksgiving is a US holiday, many Americans outside of the US still like to celebrate it.

I talked with my parents, my sister and my aunt and uncle who were all celebrating together. My parents said that many people had asked them if we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving. So let me just tell you about how we celebrated it here.

First, I have to say – its not a holiday here so we had to go to work and Alex went off to school. After Alex got back from school, we did up our dishes that we were taking to the dinner and headed off. Last year, all of the Greater Europe Mission missionaries in the area got together in one place on the Saturday for a full dinner celebration. This year, we were too many to fit in one place so we divided up into small groups for dinner. We also are celebrating on the actual Thursday as there was a special event already scheduled in town for Saturday. We got to celebrate with a family here in town who work with GEM and Alex’s first grade teacher and her son. Afterwards, all of the GEM families got together for dessert.

For me, there will always be three things that stick out in my mind about this Thanksgiving:

• This is the first Thanksgiving I have had away from my family. I don’t say this to be a downer or anything, but just stating it as a fact and something I’ll always remember.
• At our dinner table this year, we had several GEM-K’s (Greater Europe Mission Kids) who have never celebrated Thanksgiving in the US. They have lived their whole lives in Europe but are Americans. It was fascinating to hear the questions they had about different traditions that we would think any American would know but they don’t as they have never truly experienced them. This was a great reminder to me that Alex will be growing up in this same manner and his experiences will be so much different than my own growing up.
• I found out that Hannah Montana is extremely popular in the US. One of the guys at the table had recently gone back to the States and that was all he heard about from his nieces. Apparently her concerts are really expensive but are selling out. Hannah Montana has just come on TV here in Germany (in German of course). Don’t know why this was such a great source of conversation at our dinner table but I think we were all wondering Why is she so popular? Maybe its lost in translation.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US (and really belated Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in Canada). Take care.