A Thanksgiving to Remember

Thursday’s Thanksgiving will go down in history as my strangest.  Even on my mission and study abroad we had relatively normal Thanksgiving celebrations.  This year, unfortunately, I had to go to class.  I had been invited by my friend Sara to a proper American Thanksgiving, but had to turn it down because England apparently couldn’t care less about our American holidays.  The lecture I usually have on Tuesday afternoons was switched to Thursday from 4-6.  This led to me having the exciting opportunity to spend my favorite holiday listening to a fairly boring lecture about the new British history.  Definitely not Thanksgiving related.  Luckily, I did have something to look forward to later that evening.  I had been invited to a murder mystery dinner party.  We started the evening with potato and leak soup, then had chili over rice, and finished up with apple crumble.  Also not really Thanksgiving related, but delicious nonetheless.  While we ate, we became involved in a murder.  As part of the fun, I was given the part of an American journalist who was in England to cover a big horseracing event.  I was supposed to be loud, brash, and “American,” whatever that means.  Anyway, it was set in the 1920s, which is one of my favorite time periods because of the mob.  I’ve sort of always wanted to be a 1920s mobster’s girlfriend.  I realize that’s not possible, but it has always held a fairly romantic appeal to me.  Now, back to the murder.  The group of us was on the train to the races when the jockey was killed.  Through the course of the investigation, it was discovered that I had ties to the American underworld.  That’s right, I worked for the mob!  My dream had come true.  Incidentally, I was also the murderer.  Darn Americans!  We had a really good time and I was glad to have something to do so I didn’t mope around being jealous of the turkey and pie everyone was eating at home. 

            Fortunately, Friday I did get a proper Thanksgiving dinner and it was fantastic.  My friend Lindsay is also American and her parents came over for her graduation.  They brought some of the necessary ingredients for preparation of the required elements of Thanksgiving dinner.  There was turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and the required sharing of what we’re all thankful for.  I was put in charge of that, I guess, because being thankful is an American thing.  The food was delightful and we all ate until near bursting, which of course is the best part of Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, there was no fat dogging afterward.  So despite my rather strange Thanksgiving of the night before, I still got my turkey and stuffing.  Alls well that ends well, as they say.