This past Thursday was Thanksgiving Day. It was the first Thanksgiving that I spent away from home and that I didn't get to talk to my entire family. I spent the day with (mostly) people who I had just met who welcomed me into their home and fed me an insane amount of food for free, kindly driving me to the closest metro station when we were done. And I spent my Thanksgiving being thankful for new things. I was thankful for the kindness of fellow Americans in foreign countries. America may be such a big country, and the people in it so diverse, but when you are in another country you can meet an American who lives next to a different ocean than you and still feel some sort of connection to them. (okay, this is not always the case) I was thankful for familiar food and lots of it.
Today I went with two other au pairs out to my married friends' home in Hoeilaart where we baked Christmas cookies--yet another change from my yearly tradition. We cut out hundreds of tiny little sugar cookies and ginger cookies and painstakingly decorated each one with glossy white icing. I had a lot of fun making Christmas cookies in Belgium using grams and Celsius and larger sticks of butter. I still missed home though and I am beginning to realize that I have to wait an entire year to enjoy these holiday traditions with my family again. I miss silly things from home like being in the kitchen with mom making cookies as it gets dark out--I remember how if you plug in the light that is over the mixer it makes a weird zapping noise and I always think it's killing ladybugs when I turn it on. I miss the buzzer going off for like an hour without mom getting up to turn it off. Dad putting all the Christmas decorations up in the middle of November. I want to see the new fireplace all dressed up for Christmas. I'm missing it's first Christmas. I remember when I was little and it seemed to take SO LONG for Christmas to come and now Christmas seems to come so quickly. Maybe waiting until next year to do these family traditions will just be like waiting for Christmas to come when I was little.
I can't decide whether I just shouldn't think about these things--does missing home make it harder to be here and get through the holidays? I really am enjoying my time here and have done a lot of things that I will probably never get to experience again. It is not so bad of a thing to break from traditions every now and then to allow yourself the chance to try something new and in the end it makes you appreciate the traditions that you do have even more. I like the fact that, while my family does have traditions, they are not so rigid that I can't spend one year away from them. I miss them, but also realize that part of our family tradition is trying something new each year--there was the year we tried fondue, the year we tried sparkling grape juice, the year we tried reading the Christmas Story together on Christmas eve...this is me just trying something new, knowing that next year won't be the same thing.
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