The Thanksgiving of Mine

with Dennis

To be honest I did not have any idea a couple weeks before Thanksgiving Day. I thought that I would be staying in my room and chilling with my roommate who is also international student. But eventually I got email from office of international program at NDSU that they have like host family program for international students.

I applied for that. “Hopefully something changes,” I said, “because I don’t want to be stuck in this room while everybody is leaving.”

Then right a week before Thanksgiving, I got a call from Karen. She would be my host family. Thank God! She said that I had to get to her house around noon. On the Thanksgiving Day, I went there with an Indonesian family, Susilo’s family, that I know them really well.

The house is in Hawley, Minnesota. And what made quite surprised was it was by lake. Because of the cold, the lake was frozen! That was my first time looking at frozen lake. I wanted to get there as soon as possible, but the meal was ready at the same time. I put it off, but, “Happy Thanksgiving day! Let’s pray before we eat!” Dennis, Karen’s husband, said.

on the frozen lake

I got turkey, stuffing, gravy, apple pie and ice cream. It was awesome having lunch with host family and many kinds of “brand new” foods. But to be honest, I didn’t like stuffing. Other than that, I liked a lot! Afterward, I ran to the lake.

I walked on the frozen lake. I could not imagine it happened. I took some picture with Joel, Karen’s son. He also invited “Buddy”, a big lab dog. I played a bit with Joel and Buddy on the lake, took some pictures and had a lot of fun. It was impossible to do that in Indonesia, which is “every day is summer.”

When the day was getting dark, we had dinner together. Afterward, we leave, then Goodbye Dennis’ family, and Goodbye Thanksgiving day.