Thanksgiving is something that we don’t have in The Netherlands. It’s a typical American thing. It is always on the last Thursday of November. Thanksgiving is all about saying thanks to the people where you are thankful for. The day was filled with generosity and food. On Thanksgiving, it’s all about the turkey. That is the main food on the table. It is definitely not a Thanksgiving without a turkey.

Joy:

On Thanksgiving day, I woke up around 9:30 am and got ready. When I came into the living room, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on. This is in New York City and it is one of the largest parades worldwide. In the parade are all kinds of stuff. The most important thing are the balloons. They are all characters from kids tv shows like sponge bob and Pickachu. They also have marching bands, dancers, singers, and many more. At the end of watching the parade, everyone of the family came in. when everyone was settled down, it was time to say grace (a little prayer) and start eating. There was all kinds of food like mashed potatoes, turkey (obviously), cinnamon carrots, and much more. We ended it with some pumpkin pie. The food was pretty good and the family was really nice. They were all really interested in my country and culture. It was interesting to tell them about it because their dad and grandparents were from The Netherlands too.

After the dinner, it was time to prepare ourselves for Black Friday shopping! We picked up Cadence and went to Walmart first. I thought the whole store had a sale but that was not the case. Only the items in front of the aisles were on sale in big boxes. Linda bought some stuff that was on sale and we went home again to drop it off. We had to wait for Kaleigh to get off from work. At 9:00 pm she got off and came to the house with her mom. It was time to go to Columbia now! They have a huge mall here and all the stores had sales. We went to Victoria's Secret, JCPenney, American Eagle, H&M, and even more.

At 3 am we finally got home, but they wanted to go again to another store who opens at 6 am, so we had to wake up at 5 am again. Cadence laid on the couch and Kaleigh and her mom went home for these 2 hours.

Ater we almost slept through our alarms, we managed to get in the car again and went to Menards. They had some really good sales and they decorated a part of the store with a lot of Christmas decorations so that was really cool to see. At around 8:30 we were finally done (after almost 3 hours!) and went home with a car full of stuff we bought. It was something else to see all those people in the stores go crazy at 6 am. When we got home I went to sleep until 2 pm because after that I had to get ready to go to a friendsgiving dinner. It was really fun and we had a great time. Even though I was pretty tired, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it for the world.

The next day, on Saturday, we went Christmas tree shopping and we took Cadence with us. Linda really wanted to get me a real Christmas tree because I have never had one before. When we came to the farm, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was so beautiful to see. They had a whole field with Christmas trees and the sun was shining bright. It was a beautiful image. Cadence and I first did a little photo shoot (hihi) and after that our search for the best Christmas tree started.

After a while, we saw a Christmas tree who was not perfect but unique in its own way. Just like me! I tried to cut it down but the tree was a little stronger than me so that didn’t go as planned. Luckily, Deb was there to help us. Of course this Christmas tree was at the bottom of the little hill where the Christmas trees were on, so we had to drag the tree all the way up. After we got it in the truck, we went to Applebees to eat something. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

On Sunday, Linda, her best friend Cyndy and I went to Columbia because they needed some stuff from Sam’s Club which is kind of the Sligro of America. When we got our stuff, we went to Ihop for my first time! It was really good and they had a lot too.

After that it was time to go home because I had to go to Lulduz birthday party. Lulduz is another foreign exchange student from Kyrgyzstan who is going to the same school as us. Her host family has a really big house with a pool and Jacuzzi in it so that was nice. We swam, ate pizza and had a fun time. In the evening, I watched some Grey’s Anatomy with Linda (really an addiction). It was a good and relaxing end of my thanksgiving break.

It was really an amazing long weekend with a lot of experiences. I had the best time. I got so many things done off my bucket list. It was a real American break.

Flora:

I had to wake up pretty early because I was going to celebrate thanksgiving out of town. I left the house at 9 in the morning to go to Anna’s grandparents in Bowling Green. They needed some help in and around the house so we prepared the food and had our thanksgiving dinner over there. It was a typical Thanksgiving meal with turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. I was not a huge fan of the turkey, but I really liked the mashed potatoes and stuffing! When we finished our meal, we continued our trip to Chuck's house in St. Charles. After we arrived we stayed at the house for like an hour, but as soon as it was 6:30 PM it was time to go Black Friday shopping (a lot of stores are starting their sales on Thursday evening). We started at Target, I heard some crazy stories but it wasn’t as busy as I expected. We bought some stuff and after this it was time to go Ulta. This is where I bought some Christmas presents because a lot of makeup was on sale. Next was best buy. Because Haley asked us to buy a tv on sale (yes, buying TV's on Black Friday is a real thing). Getting the tv wasn’t that hard, but fitting it into the car was a big challenge. We were all squeezed up in the back, but it was pretty funny!

We went to the house to drop off our first stuff, so we could fit more stuff in the back of the car when we continued shopping. Around 11:20 we were done shopping but we were all pretty hungry, so we decided to White Castle for a late night snack. This is a St. Louis thing, but not really anything I’m gonna miss at home, because the quality wasn’t good at all. After this it was time to go back to Chuck’s house to take a short nap, because we continued shopping at 8 AM on Friday. We went to the West County mall, which was really big and had a lot of stores where I love to shop. So we spent a lot of money and stayed there for almost 4 hours.

When we were done, we went to a pizza place for lunch and dropped our stuff off at the house. We took a short nap and after this, it was time to go to a park to see a lot of Christmas lights. On our way back, Amy still needed some stuff so we continued shopping for a while. We arrived back at the house around 9:30 and I went straight to bed, because a whole day of shopping is pretty exhausting.

On Saturday it was time to go back to Mexico. The back of our car was totally full and we even had stuff in our back seat. The afternoon was pretty lazy and in the evening Ben came over to watch a movie, we hadn’t hang out in for ever so we had a lot to talk about.

On Sunday morning I went to Church with Amy and Anna, we don’t go a lot because we’re always busy on the weekends, but when they go I just go with them. After church I got ready for Luduz’s birthday party. This was so much fun. We made a deal to make a video with her one time, so we can introduce her too.

When I got home Grant came over, because we haven’t seen each other for the whole weekend. We watched a movie with Anna and Josh, but I fell asleep (as usual).

It was a good way to end this Thanksgiving break!