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Published: November 27th 2009
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After years of hearing about it on American sitcoms, I finally got to experience my first real Thanksgiving. Back home in Melbourne we were planning on having a Thanksigiving dinner, which I unfortunately missed out on. One thing I didn't realise is how huge Thanksgiving is over here. No matter what race or religion you are- you celebrate it. It's the biggest holiday of the year. Lots of families come together, hence the reason for the traffic at the airport (our plane had to wait a while to land) and the traffic driving from the airport (JFK in New York to New Jersey which took a good 3 hours).
I slept in until 4pm on the day of Thanksgiving, and woke up in time to get ready and be denied the option to eat anything until dinner time as it was quite improper. Dinner was planned at 6pm, but usually is supposed to be at 4 or 5pm. Thanksgiving dinner wouldn't start until all the family had arrived, which prompted them to tell me a story about a few years ago one of my aunties was 2 hours late, and no one was allowed to eat until they came. I
guess they went "cold turkey", get it? Get it?
Family trickled in bit by bit, around 6pm, and we were expecting a further three aunties along with their families, an uncle and also my grandpa's sister who was in town for her last night. Each person's arrival was paired with a comment on my height, and how tall I had gotten. "It must be the Australian water," they remarked in their American accents. LOL. If only they knew the truth about our Australian kangaroo eating height enhancing rituals... I was forced into standing next to my older Marine cousin to compare our heights, something which we both obviously hate doing. I came out victorious and when everyone had arrived, I was the tallest person in the house (which isn't a great feat considering I'm only approximately 6 feet tall). All of my cousins who were a lot younger last time I'd seen them had somehow grown up. This confused my brain as I have always had an image of them in my mind as mere children.
After some picture taking and my mother showing off my DSLR camera, we gathered around the dining table to begin the meal. Before the meal a few people said what they were thankful for. Coming around to me I said I was thankful for my first thanksgiving, which summoned chuckles from my audience. They said it wasn't anything special to them as they'd had many. Then when it was time to pray, my mother had conveniently forgotten to tell me that she nominated me to pray for the food. I overcame my shyness and didn't dawdle as to not cause any awkwardness. After the blessing we began to dig in.
Turkey. Cranberry sauce. Meatloaf. Fish. Ham soaked in pineapple juice. Mashed potatoes. Rice. Apple pie. Flan. The meal was very pleasant indeed, I spent half of it speaking to my uncle who's in the I.T. industry, and we spoke about routers and switches, etc. Oh how I love geek-speak. After the meal I searched around for a drink to wash down the lovely food and found people were either drinking wine, or drinking out of a can of "Sheltzer". I decided to try this mysterious drink only to find out it was carbonated water (soda water?). I hate friggin soda water, and I'd rather drink urine, although this time around it wasn't so bad. The blow was softened by the fact that the label at the rear of the can (the can's cylindrical, so can there be a front and rear?) said it had 0g of fat and 0 calories! This will help with my mission of trying to keep the weight down in the world's fattest country.
Once we had all eaten our share we lazed around, and I found out one thing: no matter where you are, filipinos will always get their karaoke on yo! After all having a few shots of patron on ice (reminds me of T.I.'s song), everyone was into it. Forcing me to sing, I chose Ricky Martin's smash hit "Livin' La Vida Loca" which rocked the house with my Ricky Martinesque voice and sexy latino dance moves. Later I had to sing again and had to sing my grandpa's favourite love song (also my parent's wedding song) "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie and some woman. I rocked the house with my Lionel Richiesque voice and sexy black dance moves. Not even.
All of a sudden the post-dinner tiredness hit everyone and the energy had disappeared from the room. We were ready to hit the hay. My first Thanksgiving, over and out.
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