Giving Thanks

I'll be keeping this post short but I thought I would share my thanksgiving experiences this year.

As my fellow Americans know, thanksgiving is a special time of year.  I like it particularly because it's not a holiday that is surrounded by religion which can sometimes divide family and friends.  Although thanksgiving certainly has it's sourness when we consider the history of settlers and their treatment of native peoples, which despite the colorful cartoons they feed children, is quite gruesome and bloody amongst both groups it can truly be a joyous holiday.

Growing up, I had a more unconventional thanksgiving than the typical advertised kind in american tv and film.  Since my extended family on both sides live very far away (Kansas and New York) we typically celebrate thanksgiving with 4-5 other families that my parents went to graduate school with.  Thus I've always been surrounded by a group of people I consider my family away from family.

When I lived in NY for my bachelors I was able to experience the more "quintessential" thanksgiving that is rich in family and inherently a little drama! Those years with my family was also truly lovely.

This year, as you know, I'm abroad and away from both types of family.  Many people asked me if I was homesick about the holiday and overall I thought, "No no, I'm fine. It's sad but what can you do?" At the beginning of the month, I wasn't sure if I would be able to participate in any kinds of mock thanksgiving meals since student housing often doesn't have an oven and even with the ovens you lack many of the tools required.  But I was blessed to celebrate the holiday this year twice!!

The sister of a friend I went to high school with is studying in Rotterdam and our mom's had spoken and she contacted me saying to call if I ever felt homesick etc.  Later she was sweet enough to think of me and invite me to join her and her friends for a thanksgiving dinner. I originally wasn't sure if I would be able to attend but in the end I was able to go and bring along my german friend, Laura.  We had a lovely time meeting new people, many of whom are also international, and eating great food.  I have to admit that it was nice to be reminded of home in the food we ate.

The second thanksgiving was Saturday.  I joined a lovely group of international students who are "mentored" by a dutch student and get together and share drinks and food weekly.  I've been really happy to meet such a great group and just lovely dutch mentors who go the extra mile to take care of us.  There are two other americans in the group though we're all from different parts of the US: New Mexico, Illinois(Chicago), and Washington DC.  Although I wasn't sure if I would be able to help out with the meal, I decided to do it and I'm glad I did.  Charlotte, one of our dutchies, offered up her parents home for the meal which made all the difference in prepping for the meal.

We started at 3:30 after picking up a 4.5 kilo/10 lbs fresh turkey from the butcher.  Alice had forethought to bring champagne which reminded me fondly of thanksgiving I share with my family in NY.  We always start our day with mimosas.  From there on out, we worked together to prepare our very first ever thanksgiving meal.  None of us had really any experience in preparing side dishes and certainly had no clue how to cook a turkey!  Luckily we were in a gorgeous fully equipped kitchen that could satisfy all of our cooking needs.

I proudly made apple pie for the first time and I thought it was delicious.  Frankly, the meal turned out better than I ever could've imagined.  We worked hard and we ate incredible amounts of food.  In case you're interested, we made:

• Turkey (with bacon on top!!)
• Stuffing
• Corn
• Candied carrots
• Pea, mushroom and onion casserole
• Mashed potatoes with rosemary goat cheese
• Salad
• Gravy from the drippings
• Apple Pie
• Lots and lots of wine and beer :D

Finally, my absolute favorite part of every thanksgiving aside from being surrounded by people you really love, is when everyone goes around the table saying what they're thankful for. To me, it's something we as a culture don't do often enough.  We are constantly rushing around frantically from one day to the next moaning about this and that and we forget to stop and look around at all the things we take for granted.  But on thanksgiving you have the chance to slow down and do just that.  And from my experiences, sometimes it can truly be tear-worthy speeches every year.  Since most guests were foreign, this was a new experience but every single person (new to the group or not) was able to say something nice and insightful about their lives.  Although many of us are thankful for the same things, each person was able to give us a peek into their lives and what truly matters to them.

So, I want to thank every person I celebrated with this year because you made this holiday mean even more to me than it did before.  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Chefs, Alice, me and Brooke from the right and our Dutch host Charlotte on far left

The masterpiece turkey

My apple pie!

The whole group :)

Familiar Comforts

So it's been about a month since I've posted about how things are going here at Utrecht and that's for a number of reasons.  I always want to have a nice coherent story to tell about my life in these posts but it often works out that this story bounces all over the place and I can't always manage it. So as a result, I'm just going to talk about my life the way it is, jumbled and fun.

This past month has been the most academically intensive of my time here so far.  We jumped into a 3 week section on molecular neuroscience and although I have some background and experience in the field, it was still demanding and cognitively exhausting at some points.  In addition to this block, we also had our midterm exam and the largest paper thus far.  Although I've had the grade scheme explained to me, it's still foreign and so it's hard to know what to expect.  If there's anything I hate, it's uncertainty.  So you can only imagine how this new grade scheme may have set me a little on edge!  But it's all over now and I'm happy enough with my grades.  I could always do better but I'm happy to have it over with.  Now that I've taken one exam I can better understand and prepare for the final exam next week!!

I continue to be blessed in the people who surround me here.  I've been able to connect with a number of great people and it has made adjusting to moving here much easier.  It's great to have international friends because you can connect over cultural differences and struggles that inherently come with being abroad and it's also great having dutch friends because they can help you out in the opposite way by teaching you more about their culture and generally helping you out by for example reading and translating the soup of the day for you....everyday.

Friday was our last day of classes and it was a bit sad.  I'm happy that the fundamentals course is over but I'll miss seeing all of my classmates everyday and sharing lunch together. I hope we all make an effort to see each other every few weeks and get together for nights out!

My *big news* is that I've chosen my internship for the next 9 months (finally!).  I'll be doing it in amsterdam which isn't the ideal since I'll have to commute but I'm positive that it will be worth it.  I'm working with transgenic mice and chronic stress modeling with attention to neurodevelopment.  What really sealed the deal for me was the opportunity to learn a number of biological and behavioral techniques.  I'm also looking forward to this part of my masters.  Doing hands on research was a huge part of my excitement with this program.  I'll start working in a few weeks and then leave for a vacation at home for 3 weeks over xmas.

One of the reasons why I named this post familiar comforts is because although I've been adjusting well and enjoying it here, I miss silly things from home.  I miss knowing what sizes I wear in shoes and clothes.  I miss going to one store and being able to find everything I might be looking for in one trip.  Here I have to wander around to different stores for different items.  It makes it a little harder for me because I'm just unfamiliar with the stores so I don't have as many "go-tos".  All of these examples are very silly and shouldn't make a difference and generally they don't but occasionally I want what I know.  I think it comes down to missing familiarity in my daily life.  I'm always working to create new familiars for myself but it's still a challenge.  And in good form, I'm giving myself more challenges by moving my daily work to another city! I guess I'm addicted to trying new things :)

Going home will satisfy those cravings for tacos and breakfast burritos with green chile.  I'll get to go skiing, spend time with great friends and see my family.  It's maybe a little silly to go back home so soon but at the same time, I can be sure that my family won't be working and friends will be home for the holidays.  It's surprising that I've only been living here for a few months.  I still have so much to learn and experience in this city and country!  Hopefully a little fluency in dutch is a part of that formula too.