Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, it's not my first time to miss Thanksgiving with my family but it is the first time to work on Thanksgiving.  I missed 2 Thanksgivings with my family when I lived in Hong Kong.  Those were different holidays for sure but it still felt like Thanksgiving.  I was surrounded by other Americans and we had the time off from school.  I spent one Thanksgiving in Thailand for a teacher's conference and loved it.  It was my first time missing Thanksgiving and the conference occupied my time so much that I didn't really think about missing Thanksgiving.  My second Thanksgiving in Hong Kong my family blessed me by coming to visit.  We ate our Thanksgiving meal at a buffet in Shenzhen, China :)  My third Thanksgiving in Hong Kong and my second away from my family I went to Malaysia.  I spent the day on the beach enjoying the sun and warmth and then had a great meal and massage at night.  It was amazing!  Since returning from Hong Kong, I have again spent Thanksgiving at home with my family.

Our traditions have changed drastically from when I was a kid.  There is no more going to Athens, eating a lot, picking up pecan trees, and helping Grandma with work around her house.  It has been evolving and continues to evolve during the last several years.  I threw yet another wrinkle into what could be the start of new traditions.  I moved to Korea and I didn't have the opportunity to go home.  Not only could I not go home, I worked all day.  It was a typical work day and no one knew it was Thanksgiving!  There is a massive Busan English Education Exhibition and most of the English teachers were there all day.  I spent the morning teaching my classes alone and then in the afternoon I joined them at BEXCO for the Exhibition.  Today was very much just another day.

But yet it wasn't.  I woke up early and had a wonderful opportunity to Skype with my cousins while my family gathered for Thanksgiving.  Getting to see and talk with cousins that I talk with every 6 months to a year or longer was wonderful.  It was great to get a quick conversation in before I had to rush off to work.  And tonight I will Skype briefly with my family.  Otherwise, it was very much just a work day in Busan.  I went to work, to the exhibition and then spent some time at the world's largest department store shopping with a co-teacher.

Most of the night I've been reminding myself that its Thanksgiving and that I need to call home before going to bed.  It hasn't felt like Thanksgiving and since I started teaching about Christmas on Nov. 16 Christmas has been on my mind.  I found a great website (www.yuleplay.com) that has tons of Christmas playlists for free.  I've listened to Christmas music while planning my lessons and been contemplating how to decorate my room so it looks like there is a semblance of a Christmas tree.  Mostly I need Christmas lights and therefore a trip to Nampo.  I am typically a person who refuses to listen to Christmas music, decorate, or talk about Christmas until after Thanksgiving but definitely not this year.  But I don't have tons to look forward to with Thanksgiving.  There isn't a break from school (my next break is Christmas Day) and I wouldn't be eating turkey and dressing on Thanksgiving (but thankfully I will get some at church on Sunday).  It really was a holiday that wasn't to me.

This made me stop and think a lot.  What does Thanksgiving mean to me?  Thanksgiving has always been time with family and specifically my mom's family (my dad's family is more specific to Christmas).  It was time to be together and eat some great food.  It was time to laugh a lot and be outdoors.  It was time to catch up with one another and at times play a hand of cards.  Mostly it was just time together.  The rest of the break would be spent with my parents and brothers.  Black Friday shopping was the norm for a few years and then it wasn't.  Catching up on sleep is always a must for Thanksgiving.  Taking a break from work or from school work happened too.  But mostly, it was just a break from the norm and time spent cherishing my family.

Not being at home this year really prohibits the spending time with family.  But my plans are to relax on Saturday (read sleep in since I don't have to teach :)), eat a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with my church family, and Skype with my family.  It's just different.  I miss my family and would love to be with them and have felt homesick this week in particular but missing Thanksgiving isn't gut-wrenching to me.  Maybe its because I've done it before.  Maybe its because I can still see my family on Skype, maybe its because our traditions have changed a lot of the most recent years and so the norm of my childhood was already gone.  Christmas though, that's a different story.  That's going to be a tough one to handle being in Korea.  So for now, I'm going to try and wrap my mind around what its like to be away for a holiday and to make new traditions.  What its like to celebrate more on my own than with my family.  And what its like to experience a holiday that others are not celebrating.  It's a little bit of preparation for Christmas.

As I've been typing, my thoughts have flowed in a direction very different than what I thought I would write.  I thought I would write about the funny expressions of surprise on the 2 kids faces when they saw me on the bus and how they asked to make sure I was a teacher at Yangjeong Elementary and then how they waited to see if I got off at the same stop that they did to go to school.  I thought I would write about the surprise on my students faces when I told them it was Thanksgiving after they brought up the holiday during part of our lesson today.  I thought I would write about the surprise on my co-teachers faces when I told them it was Thanksgiving.  I thought I would write about being thankful for Skype and being able to see my family and my cousins and aunt this morning.  But what I ended up writing was more what I was feeling.  Anxiety beginning and homesickness starting as I approach my first Christmas away from home.  I know that it is going to be different and I know that it will be hard.  But I also know that I followed God's leading in moving to Korea and that he knows my wants and my needs.  He knows how I am feeling and I am trusting Him with my heart.  I have always known that there would be a year when I wouldn't be at home for Christmas but I always thought it would first be because I was married and was starting new traditions as a newly-wed.  This wasn't the picture I had in mind but it was God's.  I'm here for a reason.  I know that I will make it through it.  I've made it through Thanksgiving.  I can make it through Christmas too!  To those who read, this blog, thank you.  Thank you for your support.  Thank you for your prayers.  Thank you for checking in.  It really means a lot to me.  I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!