I know that Thanksgiving is probably one of the biggest holidays in North America, if not the biggest. What I didn’t realize of think about, that even Canadians celebrate this holiday as well. However, Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving a bit different than those in the lower part of North America. They recognize the holiday a month earlier as they are truly celebrating the new harvest.
Many of us non-Canadians living here realized that till we noticed that many of our friends were going home for the weekend to be with the families for this holiday. Where I come from, Egypt Thanksgiving is not celebrated or recognized at all. There is no significance for us, though I was raised to respect the holiday for those who it did have meaning.
Growing up, I have watched my mother prepare and roast a turkey on occasion. Since I was in Canada, a part of North America, I decided to add roasting a turkey to my Bucket List! Many of us not from Canada were going to be here on campus, so a gathering of my friends to celebrate our thanks for having a great opportunity living in this beautiful city, just seemed appropriate.
First of all, I am still young and again, as I have mentioned here before, I am somewhat naive I many ways. As such, my friends and I had no idea of the planning and preparation in this type of meal. A group of six of us went to the store to purchase the key things for our Thanksgiving meal.
By not being aware of the preparation needed beforehand, we quickly found that apparently, we were almost too late in purchasing a turkey. There were only two left and as such, between the two that were left; we choose a sweet bird that weighed nearly 10 kgs.
Our next lesson learned was no matter how passionate and excited you are in having your first Thanksgiving meal as a make-shift family on campus, the roasting of a turkey takes EIGHT hours! Your hunger aside and your Passion for perfection aside, it takes time for this bird to roast and be ready to eat. By the time our bird was cooked and ready, our crowd of ten was starving and the meal was devoured with joy and Passion that reflected a success!
I must say, that this is one experience marked off my Bucket List. It was absolutely lovely to be among friends and share what with each other what we were grateful for on this day, in our lives. This is by far my favorite experience in Canada.
For myself, I am thankful for the opportunities my parents have encouraged and supported me to do in my life, creating and going after everything on my Bucket List with the passion I have learned to appreciate. I also, am very thankful for the great friends I have made and the great future I have ahead of me.
