Expat Mums Blog

Thanksgiving in the UK

Thanksgiving is one of the hardest holidays as an American-born expat. I’d say it is harder than the Fourth of July – it is getting close to winter and the daylight hours are waning, often pitch dark not long after school pickup.

It is that awkward time of year when the temperatures haven’t dipped low enough for Jack Frost to cast a shimmering spell over the rooftops, it is just cold and grey and gloomy.

Every year I make an effort to preserve the Thanksgiving tradition. When I was working fulltime, I would take the day off and spend it in the kitchen.

Please, leave your sick kids at home!

PLEASE, my fellow moms -- if your child threw up last night’s dinner or had the loo permanently stuck to their bottom last night, DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL.

I don’t care if you asked him if he wanted to stay home and he said no. I would want to get out of the house too if I was faced with the choice of helping a grumpy mommy with the growing mountain of laundry the size of Everest or playing with my friends.

The thing is, when you send your sick child to school, they spread their germs. They don’t do it intentionally – they cough or sneeze and the virus suspends itself in mid air, non discriminate on where, or on whom, it lands.

Ever wonder why the beef smells funky in the UK?

I remember my first trip to the UK in 1990. I was an exchange student and had come to live with a family in Bath.

On the first day, I was very tired, yet very excited. It was my first time in a country outside of the US (besides a family bicentennial road trip across the US and into Canada in 1976 and the obligatory Tijuana bar hopping as a college student).

I had noticed so many differences already. Everything was smaller. Why does that sign on the side of the road say "toilet" (or is it "to let"?) And each time we passed a car I was sure we were going collide.

Is there an elephant in that zoo?

When my 4 1/2 year old daughter asked me if she had ever seen an elephant in real life, I flashed back zoo visits over the past four years.

None. 

We've taken the older three to the zoo, but not the youngest. As a matter of fact, we have probably not come within 50 miles of an elephant in quite a long time.  

Now I was on a mission.  Luckily, we were already planning a trip into London and it presented a great opportunity to show my daughter a "real life" elephant at the London Zoo.

Or so I thought.