By Matt Stephenson–
It’s hard to believe that the semester is almost over and Thanksgiving is upon us. Many students are already starting to stress about finals, but before the real cramming can start most students go home to their families to celebrate.
But what do you do during these five days if you are not an American? In most cases internationals live too far away to go home for just five days.
In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving much earlier on the second Monday of October. No, we don’t have the stories of the Pilgrims and the Indians. It’s just a holiday to celebrate the harvest and everything we are thankful for from the past year. This will be my third Thanksgiving in America and this year I am looking to do more than sit around and play video games with my English roommates.
This past week I scoured the campus looking for fellow internationals to find out what they do during thanksgiving. Ben Williams a senior from England said, “I’m heading up to Philly to meet some family, getting that Black Friday shopping in too.”
Alaa Hawsawi, from Saudi Arabia said, “To be honest, I’m not doing anything except my homework. But if I finish my homework before Thanksgiving I will go to Missouri and have dinner with my second family and do some Black Friday shopping.”
I also talked to Aurilla Wilson, a freshman from Canada. Wilson said, “I am going to my roommate’s family gathering and sharing a Thanksgiving meal with them.”
There are also a couple options for people stuck in Louisville over the break. On Nov. 24, you can visit Louisville’s Mega Cavern where you can weave your way through 17 miles of underground passageways featuring over 850 lit characters and over 2 million points of lights. If you’re into Mythbusters, you can go to the Behind the Myths Tour at Whitney Hall on Nov. 25. There are even Thanksgiving dinners that you can attend at Churchill Downs and aboard the Spirit of Jefferson on Nov. 27.
