Disclaimer: There are actually no posts about Thanksgiving experiences from this year (at least not yet) on Voices, so I think one won’t be too bad to read.
One debate I had going in to college was whether I should come home for Thanksgiving. At first, my mom was adamant that I come home, but I pointed out to her that it wouldn’t be very practical to spend $600 just to be home for less than 5 days when I would return for a month only 3 weeks later. So, we decided that I would stay here instead and just come home for the winter (of course, as you know, I went home for Fall Break, but that’s because that trip cost $400 and I really needed to go home during that time).
Luckily, ever since I had officially decided to come to Pomona and my friend Maya decided to go to Art Center in Pasadena, we realized that we were a mere bus ride (albeit a 2-hour bus ride) away, so we decided to spend Thanksgiving together. Thus, after a long-awaited 7 months, I am proud to say that my Thanksgiving actually went better than I had hoped.
First, the bus ride was great. The weather was beautiful, and the 187 never stopped for an inconvenient reason (eg. because of a breakdown or just because the bus driver decided they weren’t going to go all the way to Pasadena after all), so the ride was peaceful.
When I got to Pasadena, my friend and I started our trek to Pavilions, a grocery store that was thankfully open on Thanksgiving. The walk there wouldn’t have been so bad, but the journey back might have, considering we’d be carrying pounds of chicken and potatoes. That’s why we were so lucky when we ran into one of Maya’s friends who happened to be driving to Pavilions to do his Thanksgiving shopping too. On our way back to Maya’s apartment building, I found out that her friend lived a couple floors above her and that he had two very fluffy cats. Now, you may not know this, but I am obsessed with all things fluffy and all things cat, so hearing that he had fluffy cats and that he’d let us play with them while he finished up cooking some stuff for Thanksgiving was wonderful.
When Maya and I got back to her apartment though, we realized that we had some work to do. Since she and her roommates are always so busy, they don’t really get around to doing chores. That means that there were dirty dishes everywhere. We couldn’t cook much until we got at least some dishes cleaned, but luckily I had bought an aluminum baking pan for the chicken, so we were able to season and prepare the chicken for marination before tackling the dishes. After tackling and conquering piles of dishes, we decided it was time for a well-deserved break. So, we went to the place that you absolutely must visit if you ever venture into Pasadena: Old Town.
We didn’t really do anything other than get a Peppermint Hot Chocolate from Starbucks, but it was definitely worth the walk. Look at this pretty Christmas tree I took a picture of in Old Town!
When we returned, we decided it was time to bake the chicken and start on the potatoes. We cooked the potatoes (sorry, but I can’t really give details on how I made the chicken and potatoes since they’re my Mom’s recipes!) and by the time those were done, the chicken was ready. This was quite possibly the shortest amount of cooking time and preparation that a Thanksgiving dinner has ever taken. Look at the product (the garlic bread and apple cider were store-bought from Pavilions, not products of our own labor).
Afterward, we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which was really charming. I recommend watching all of the Charlie Brown holiday specials, by the way. Then, we watched Home Alone to kick off the Christmas season (because really, what movie could be more festive and heartwarming than a movie about a young boy who gets stranded at home alone while left to face off against a couple of persistent robbers on his own?), after which I fell asleep.
And that concludes my first Thanksgiving away from home! I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, no matter where you spent it!