Thanksgiving for Kailey

Today is Thanksgiving, and even though I’m 4,685 miles away from home, I popped out of bed this morning before my alarm because of a lifelong habit, a culturally ingrained anticipation of the celebration to come.  Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that you just have to be present for.  It’s a holiday that never loses it’s magic.

            Waking up on a holiday feels different than waking up any other day of the week, better somehow. But as the enchantment coursed through my sleepy veins, I was reminded just how far 4,685 miles is from home, and I imagined what my family was doing at the moment, what I was missing out on. So many memories flooded my head, and I started thinking about what the day would hold for them. I found myself imagining their next moves, what their faces look like while they’re cooking, laughing, talking.

Growing up, my brother and I would get up on Thanksgiving morning, snuggle down on the couch next to each other, and watch Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade for hours. Then our mother would send us outside to play until it was time to go to our grandparents house. I have no idea how many Thanksgiving days he and I passed like that, but I like to think it was many. Then we started hosting Thanksgiving. It was high time that we both contributed and thus began the annual pre-Thanksgiving prep, laboring in the kitchen until our feet hurt and our backs ached and our stomachs were full of nothing but mistakes and the ingredients we snitched, which was more than enough.  We would go to bed on Wednesday night tired, joyful, and satisfied.  We would arise early on Thanksgiving to iron table cloths and napkins and finish baking and cooking, to start the meat and mash the potatoes.

Today, my brother will get up and start smoking meat, maybe lamb. (My family proudly serves the flesh of at least three different animals.) Everyone will rush around until late morning, when they will rush around trying to look presentable before my grandparents arrive. At noon my mother’s parents will arrive, bearing ham. My grandmother will come into the kitchen and make gravy while my father carves the turkey. Then the rest will file in at one in the afternoon, babies and children playing at everyone’s feet. People will gather in the kitchen to help, their sleeves rolled up, and their spirits light. When dinner time comes, they’ll all hold hands around the table and pray, to thank God for what He’s given them, and then they’ll continue to stand as they all tell each other what they’re grateful for this year, even the smallest among them. 

Rolling out of bed this morning, I thought of all of this, and couldn’t help but think what 4,685 miles means for me. How far I am from my family. How I won’t spend Thanksgiving enjoying a huge meal with my family and friends. How I won’t sing along with the music, or bake the bread, or cut up potatoes and put them on to boil. I thought about how I’m going to spend my Thanksgiving this year as I spend every Thursday this semester, cleaning, doing laundry, and grocery shopping.  I thought of all of this and I started feeling homesick. But as the fog lifted from my head, sleepy and nostalgic, I remembered what Thanksgiving really means. Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what you’re grateful for, and thank God for all that you have. 

So I started to think of all the things I’m thankful for. It’s a long list. I have a lot to be thankful for. I’m thankful first, for my family, a safe group of people who love me unconditionally. I’m thankful for a roof over my head, and clothes that keep me warm. I’m thankful for good health, Lord knows how I’ve waited on that. I’m thankful that I’m spending this Thanksgiving in London, studying abroad. I’m thankful that I’ve been given the means to study abroad without going hungry or missing a meal. I’m thankful for the wonderful friends I’ve made in the UK. I’m thankful that I have laundry to do. I’m thankful that I have friends back home who love me. I’m thankful for so many things, that a list can’t contain them. With all of this recognized thankfulness, I think I really I started celebrating Thanksgiving. A meal may be traditional, and holidays are better spent with friends and family, but sometimes, it’s good to sit back and reflect on why it is you celebrate a holiday, and what it means to you. This year I’m observing Thanksgiving in quiet, stripped of all the tradition, of all the extra, but I’m celebrating it all the same.

At the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims were so thankful to be not dead that they gathered together and had a meal and celebrated with the people who helped to ensure their aliveness.  I think that’s the reason why Thanksgiving never loses it’s enchantment. Because it’s the most sincere holiday of them all. Year in and year out families and friends come together and celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s never inflated beyond proportion. Those who celebrate it understand that it is a time to give thanks for all that you have. Nothing more, nothing less. But that’s what makes it endure. That’s what makes it beautiful.

In Which Kailey's Friends Come to Town

This weekend, my friends Harper and Jon came to visit. I met them both through our mutual friend Amber back home. Amber majors in Jazz voice (which is why I know her) and ecology? Amber also reads this blog, so if I got that last part wrong, she will know I wasn’t paying attention. It’s science something and she works her tail off for it, even in the summer, I’m positive about that. Sorry, Amber. I promise I’m only marginally fake.  

            Anyway, Harper and Jon and Amber and I all have something in common. We go to the same school. But Harper, Jon and I are studying abroad this semester in different countries. Informed by Amber that Harper was studying abroad in Wales this semester, I invited Harper to stay with me if she ever needed a place in London. She replied in a most likely affirmative manner, and a couple weeks later asked me if both she and Jon could stay at my place for what is now this past weekend.  The more the merrier I always think, so I found myself with two people over six foot sleeping on my student accommodation floor this weekend, one on a camping mat, the other on a makeshift, folded duvet mat. It works.

On Friday, we went to a student Thanksgiving social at a family’s house in London. I’ve been going to hang out there every other Friday night, and this time the Americans brought a Thanksgiving meal potluck style, while Eea, the woman of the house, made turkey.  Jon had arrived the night before, so he helped me make cranberry sauce until it was clear that the knives in our kitchen were not suitable for a novice and his eyes could not handle the onions. Then he went around and cleaned. Which was super helpful to say the least. On Friday afternoon, we picked up Harper from the station, walked to Saint Paul’s Cathedral, walked back home, packed up the cranberry sauce, and headed out to the only Thanksgiving meal at least two out of the three of us will have this year. Dinner was definitely yummy and the company was great. To say I am ashamed that I went back for thirds on Friday night would not be an untruth. While this is perfectly acceptable behavior at home, I’ve noticed that English appetites are a bit less piggish and a bit more proper.

            On Saturday the three of us toured London armed with a list of the things we had to accomplish before bedtime. Getting out at about 10:30 in the morning when all was said and done, we saw the following in no particular order: Marble Arch, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, the African exhibit at the British Museum, Primark, the London Eye, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Cambden Market (where everything looks like Christmas and we got homesick), and the Golden Jubilee Bridge. To top it all off we rode a double decker bus and ate at Nandos and some hole in the wall fish and chips place. On Sunday Jon left, and Harper and I, although well-intentioned in our desire to go to church, overslept. This is hard to do. My church is only fifteen minutes away by foot and doesn’t start until 11. But we managed. Instead of church we went to London Bridge and King’s Cross Station (where parts of Harry Potter were filmed). I showed her Tower Bridge, Borough Market (where other parts of Harry Potter were filmed), Little Dorit Park, the George (a tavern that Charles Dickens was known to frequent), the site of the Clink prison in Southwark, the Monument to the Great Fire of London. Harper treated us to climb up all 311 steps of the Monument to view London from the top, and I pointed out well-known office buildings according to their nicknames, Shard, the Cheesegrater, the Gerkin, and the Walkie Scorchie.

And thus concludes the synopsis of my weekend. I’m including pictures, but I’m not really sure what I did with my camera again this time. I’m failing at camera lately. So there are very few pictures that turned out in any remote sense of the word.  I think I’ve corrected my settings now, but we’ll see next time I post pictures. 

Gotta get that telephone booth photo.

Jon at Buckingham Palace at 4:30 in the afternoon. With such a bright smile, who needs sunshine?

Again...Who needs sunshine?

I found this stick and balanced it on my hand. Naturally Harper had to pick it up after I threw it down.

And because this whole post was such a rambling one, and because I have no real conclusion, I guess I’ll just let it trail off with this one word of sentimentality. Harper and Jon, I could not have been more happy to have you this weekend, and I hope we get to hang out a lot more when we all get home. You guys are golden.

 

In Which Kailey Does Some Traveling

And…life goes on. I’ve been marginally failing at updating this blog consistently. Those of you at home might say, “Why Kailey, I’m sure you’re busy, you must have some excuse.” Or maybe that's just me in my own brain. Some of you even went as far as saying that you expected you wouldn’t hear from me as often once the pace picked up here. Let me put this for you in four short words. I have no excuse.  Plain and simple. I’m pretty sure I could have scraped up plenty of time to give you some sort of update on Sunday these past two weeks. But I didn’t.  So now it is Thursday and I’m giving you a synopsis of my excapades in the week past.

This weekend I went to the Czech Republic to visit my friend Eliska. Because only those who love me really read this blog, I’m almost sure you’ve encountered her before. Maybe in the flesh. Maybe recently. Maybe you’ve never met her but you’ve heard me talk about her. Maybe you’ve only recently met me or don’t know me and certainly don’t know Eliska, and for some unknown reason you’ve stumbled upon this blog and are interested enough to have read all the way to the second paragraph. Good for you! She cropped up here and here on my blog (and in my life) previously. She’s a very important person to me, and I’ve known her since I was eight.

But, as I was saying. I visited my friend Eliska this weekend in the Czech Republic. Arriving on Thursday night, I was picked up by Eliska’s mother, Anna. Anna then proceeded to lose herself within the labyrinth that is the Prague interstate system. (Really it’s kind of a nightmare.) I wasn’t really sure what was going on since Anna doesn’t speak much English and I speak even less Czech, but given the fact that I spend a significant chunk of my life lost, I could tell that we weren’t found. Also, I started to get the idea that Anna thought that because I had known Eliska for almost twelve years and people are generally able to pick up language when they are surrounded by it for an extended period of time, I would at least understand what she was saying in Czech when her English vocabulary was insufficient. That would be intuitive in most circumstances, but Czech is a totally different ball game. There is no way that I will ever understand the Czech language without formal lessons. People often say that English is a hard language to learn. They have never attempted Czech. The effort required to comprehend even the idea of Czech makes English look like Kindergarten naptime. After vacantly smiling in Anna’s direction while she spoke to me in Czech for a while, I watched as Anna turned on the radio, skipped over the talk show channel, and settled for bad European pop, until she changed it to classical music, and then a folk station. Because everyone knows incomprehension when they see it and it was certainly written all over my face.  Needless to say, we did find our way home and then I thought it was bedtime so I got into footsie pajamas. Eliska laughed at me good-naturedly for wearing them, and Anna asked me whether I had a bear onesie also, and I tried to explain that no I didn’t but I did have a giraffe onesie, but I’m not really sure we communicated.

The next day I went with Eli to the school at which she teaches. She’s an English teacher at a high school and she asked if I would be her special guest and conversate with her kids. Given that last use of vernacular, I’m not really sure she chose the right person, but I did go. We sat around tables and they went in a circle and each asked me a question in English, which I answered in English. The first class asked basic questions like, “Why are you here?” “How long are you here?” “What’s your favorite Czech food?” “How do you know Eliska?”  Eliska’s favorite class asked questions like, “How do you feel about your U.S. government?” “What did you think about the shut-down?” “Do you have siblings? What are they like?” “What has your study abroad experience been like?” “What are you going to do with your life?” And my favorite question of the day, “Do you have any funny stories to tell us about you and Eliska?” I told them this one. (Gotta love vague hyperlinks.) The last class I talked to was given decks of cards with questions on them to generate discussion. They were very shy, and because the Czech school system cares just about as much about what teachers do with their students as the honey badger does, Eliska left me to my own devices and supervised a movie watching session in another room, returning at the end of class to wrap up. What twenty-year-old American woman gets to hang out alone in a classroom full of Czech teenagers just chatting for the sake of chatting? This one.

The last time I was in the Czech Republic, I met Petra, one of Eliska’s lifelong friends, while we were lodging in a communist era cabin in the mountains for several days along with several other people Eliska and Petra knew.  We planned to visit her and her children again while I was there and took a bus to Milín, sitting on the floor of the bus since there were no seats left. Petra and her husband, Vojta, have the coolest house decked out with wood everywhere in the little town of Milín, and I was very honored to be a guest there. Also I think I’m a little fatter because of it. Petra is a phenomenal cook. So without further ado, here are some extra noisy pictures of my time with Petra and her family. I'm pretty sure this was the sort of day where flash would have been advisable, but I am a stubborn person opposed to flash unless absolutely necessary. Mostly because I'm not really sure how to use it without making people's faces blindingly white. So. All that to say you'll have to endure the less than mediocre picture quality from this point forward. 

Ondra's friend Eliska spent the night the first night that we were there, and then spent the day. For the sake of this blogpost that contains two Eliska's, I'll call her "Little Eliska," and my Eliska, "Big Eliska." 

This is Ondra. He has a the best squinty smile when he's really amused, but I failed to capture it due to being present for the smiles, but not with camera in hand.

We took a nature walk around the premises of a castle near Petra's house. There are so many castles in the Czech Republic. It's not even funny. Big Eliska offered to take my picture. So I climbed on top of something and managed to pose in a less-than-flattering manner. Because I'm gifted at goofy.

Little Eliska became pretty enamored with me for some reason and held my hand for the good portion of our nature walk on Saturday. 

The composition of this photo is not spectacular by any means, but I'm posting it regardless. I think it gives a good illustration of two striking things. One being the exploratory nature of Czech people that is characteristically similar to Coloradans. The other is the state of my figure since I started running longer distances in addition to all the walking I have to do to get places. My mixed genetic make-up dictates that this increase in activity causes thickening rather than thinning. I'll just leave it at that. 

These kids have known each other since they were babies. They're six now and are planning their wedding. Can I get an "awwwww?"

Also, Ondra never stops moving and grooving. He seems to have very focused energy and plenty of it.

"Views"

No telling what this memorial is for.

Pretend that this is an old time photo, and not that I was wielding my camera in an ignorant manner.

Skillz, my people. Skillz. 

After our nature walk, we came back, and snacked, and colored for a while. Petra took this picture.

I swear this soup was the most amazing pumpkin dish I have ever tasted aside from pumpkin pie. Maybe even more so, because it was to die for. Petra is such a good cook.

This cat is adorable. He is incredibly friendly and well-loved. And nameless.

I leave you with this mug to show what can happen when you become family with someone overseas. This mug belonged to my family back in the day, and I found it in Big Eliska's apartment. Apparently Eli got so attached to it that my mom told her to just take it. So she did, and I stumbled across it years later in a different country across the ocean. Go figure. 

In Which Kailey Has a Think About Things

Lately I’ve been enjoying (almost) every minute of London, and I think the key was that I adjusted, or changed my perspective, or something just shifted in my thinking. I don’t remember if I told you, but City University is a terrible school. When I first arrived, I found out that they had changed the class roster and I had to choose classes somewhat at random to avoid being sent home. Then, despite the fact that I was promised a professor from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, I was placed with a student teacher four weeks after the term started. But it gets better. I was only recently allowed access to the practice rooms about a week and a half ago despite my major and my many requests to have access. Other students I know don’t even have “professors” yet for their voice-type/instrument. I’ve started to think of City University not as a school, but as an arena to take place in an extended summer/fall/winter break, as an excuse to be in London and learn my junior recital repertoire.

            The school situation hasn’t changed, but I find myself genuinely enjoying the days I spend here. I’ve been attending King’s Cross Baptist Church, and they allowed me to practice early in the mornings, effectively solving my practice problem. My buddy Pete who lives there and takes care of students (BTW what is his job title?) shuffles down in the morning only half an hour after he’s woken up to let me in and put on the space heater. This is because he’s awesome.

            Another change of perspective that’s let me enjoy myself more is to never go into any place in London expecting to get anything done. Don’t get your hopes up for anything. It may sound defeatist, but if you’re coming from the US, and more than that, a school that just knows how to get stuff done, this attitude is more like an indifferent coping mechanism. Sure, see if you can print your paper, but if it gets carried away in the pile four times and you end up being late to class, don’t sweat it. Just have a back up plan and try again later. Sure, leave the house with the intention of buying groceries, but if it ends up taking three times longer than it should take because the attendees have to come over and make you sign for your card while you’re using the self-checkout kioks, and then when you pay with cash, the machine eats all your money and someone has to come out and figure out how much you put in before the machine ate all your money, and then someone else has to come and unlock the machine to give you back your money and then you have to do everything all over again, don’t worry about it. (Yes, I know that was a run-on sentence.) You’ll walk out with groceries regardless, just plan time into your schedule for everyone else to figure out what their job is while you wait. If you go into a store planning on returning something, don’t expect the person behind the counter to know what the company’s return policy is. I mean this in all sincerity. It makes your life easier and happier if when you’re living in London, you expect nothing to go in your favor. If you set the expectation bar low, when a few things fall into place at a decent pace, you’ll just find yourself ecstatic.

            But if I’m going to be completely honest, the more I adjust to life in London the farther away home feels. The other night I had a dream that I was back home, and as I drove through the wide, open roads and passed the suburban buildings spaced so far apart, the whole place seemed so strange to me. I woke up and realized that culture shock will be very real for me when I get home.  

            If I go home, I will have to say goodbye, and the longer I’m away from home, the harder goodbyes will be. The longer I’m here the more they loom on the horizon. When I left home, I said goodbye to my friends and family. I spent a week preparing myself for my exit with visits and conversations, with kisses and hugs, but I knew I would see them again soon. Now people I hold more and more dear everyday surround me, and I can’t guarantee my exit will be so soft, so easy this time. I can’t guarantee I’ll be back so soon.