Thanksgiving 2016

American and Canadian Thanksgiving do not fall on the same date. Canadian Thanksgiving is a more subtle celebration, usually just commemorated with a day or two off work or school and it falls the second Monday in October. I sort of went home for Canadian Thanksgiving - I took a train up to Montreal with a few friends to see my homeland for a couple hours before returning to New York. That being said, although Montreal is a Canadian city, it is still five hours away from Vancouver by plane which is why I say I only ‘sort of’ went home. American Thanksgiving is, apparently, a rather elaborate holiday. Everyone takes, more or less, the whole week off, and goes home, and beats up fellow shoppers on Black Friday etc. I didn’t really know how big a deal it was which is why, this year, I didn’t plan to fly home which was a big mistake (or so I thought).

By Tuesday afternoon my last friend had left Manhattan and I was completely alone. The first few hours were tough, I sort of felt like a tourist at the Grand Canyon, “Okay, I’m here… but what do I do now?…”.

It was about one in the morning when I decided to go to bed. Only I didn’t really decide to go to bed I decided to lie in bed for a couple minutes and watch a little bit of Terence Malick’s The New World, before dozing off. Once again – big mistake. Three hours later I am bleary eyed, my shirt drenched in tears and sweat, watching Collin Ferrel saying his final good-bye to Pocahontas. What a film.
Wednesday morning I couldn’t get out of bed. Partly because I hadn’t gone to sleep until four or four thirty and partly because I still couldn’t stop thinking about Collin Ferrel and Pocahontas, and Christian Bale – he was there too.

After that I spent most of my day walking. I had to go to the Chelsea Market to buy chocolates for a friend who had invited me to his house in Westchester for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a nice walk and it wasn’t too cold out. To get from my place to the Chelsea market I basically just go straight west through the village and to the water. So I had a nice time on the walk and I bought the chocolates but when I got back I realized it was getting quite late and I had a paper due Friday which I hadn’t even started yet.

So I didn’t make it to Westchester for Thanksgiving the next day on account of I hadn’t finished my paper yet. I thought being alone on Thanksgiving would make me sad but it didn’t since I had all the chocolates to myself now. Besides, my paper was on Spanish history and I really like Spanish history, and on top of all that, by the time I finished my paper The Weeknd’s new album, Starboy, had dropped. And it was far from a disappointment – especially that track with Lana Del Rey. She’s quite something.

​So I suppose staying here alone for Thanksgiving wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I got a lot of work done and now I get to stay at home and watch movies and listen to The Weeknd for the rest of the "weeknd". I even got my parents to pay for a nice solo Thanksgiving meal – see attached picture of Canadian Blueboy below.