Megan’s abroad in London, England, until Dec. 13.

It’s really hard to find a turkey in London. You wouldn’t think so, and neither did I until I looked around Sainsbury’s, our local grocery store. Turkey’s not a big thing to eat here — as one of my British friends said, nobody eats turkey here except for on Christmas, and even then most people don’t like it. Hence my flat’s makeshift bird: a small turkey breast accompanied by two massive drumsticks. It was a mutant turkey, but it was a delicious mutant, so it all worked out.

Small adjustments were a recurring theme this past Thanksgiving. First of all, I had to cook two servings of my mom’s famed sweet potato casserole, since not only did my flat have a Thanksgiving dinner, but so did a big group of my American friends. Half of my night was spent bouncing around between Thanksgivings, making sure I didn’t spend too much time in one place while neglecting my other friends. The other half was spent in the kitchen with my two American flatmates, converting recipes to the metric system and feeling like a grown-up with my own cooking responsibilities.

Thanksgiving dinner in London. Photo by the author.

One of my favorite parts of the day was showing my British friends and flatmates their first Thanksgiving. At one party we made old-school hand turkeys and proudly displayed them on the wall, and in the other I had to defend the tradition of Thanksgiving (even though it’s now kind of associated with killing Native Americans). The Brits came to the decision that Thanksgiving is essentially a preview of Christmas dinner, and that it’s quintessentially American to require two Christmas dinners in the span of one month. I can’t say I disagree.

Though I did have fun, Thanksgiving Day was the first day where I really started to feel homesick. And all you guys with your Facebook statuses saying “Steve is home for Thanksgiving” didn’t help much either. Thanksgiving is nothing if not about family, and long phone calls and Skype conversations with my parents didn’t really cut it. It was my first Turkey Day away from home, and it was tough being in a place that didn’t even acknowledge the holiday’s existence. Luckily, my friends were there to make our London dorms feel like home.

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