Thanksgiving from Abroad.

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My fellow American Sara and I had been plotting Thanksgiving for weeks. Her second holiday overseas and my first, we were past the idea of moping around and being sad we weren't with our families and decided to focus on making the best of the holiday here in England. 

Mental hurdle aside, there were a few obstacles we were ready for...

A. It was going to be impossible to find all of the "Thanksgiving-y" supplies. Stouffers and Betty Crocker doesn't exist here. I hadn't seen anything pumpkin flavored in weeks. 

B. It was going to be expensive – we were already scraping together money for Christmas and the hope of a mini-holiday soon. 

C. We had never been in charge of the main event back home, and didn't really know what we were doing. I've been at the kids table for 23 years and no plans on budging anytime soon. 

Wednesday rolled around and we set out around town on our quest for something that looked like Thanksgiving food. Much to our surprise, several hours and several stores later, we found just about everything. Save for pecan pie and oven baked rolls, but I'll take it.

Sweet potatoes, rolls, green beans, cranberry sauce, crunchy onions, gravy supplies, misc. toppings courtesy of Waitrose and Sainsburys

Stuffing, Kraft Mac & Cheese (our personal touch to the Thanksgiving meal) from Tesco

Turkey, ham, pies from M&S

Classy paper tablecloth, plastic serve ware, don't forget the pinecones, from Wilko

With no access to Thanksgiving day football, we played a 6-year old game from our undergrad university on repeat thanks to YouTube. We Googled metric system conversions, made British people try to label a map of the US, and Facetimed home to our families to proudly show our parents that we are maybe adults – "Look look!!! It's a turkey!!! We cooked it!!!!"

We were so busy cooking, laughing at ourselves, and watching football that we didn't have any time to feel like we were missing out on activities back home, dare I say it was actually...fun? One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving is watching the National Dog Show with my sister, but she said she didn't even have time to watch it this year, so I didn't really miss out then, did I?

It may be a little quieter than normal here on the blog, because December + the first half of January is going to be out of control. I'm so excited to be going home in a few weeks, but it is going to be a whirlwind of Christmas, family-time, multiple weddings, events, seeing friends and family as much as possible, preparing for a new term, and trying to squeeze in some work on my impending essay deadlines. The happiest and busiest time of the year!