Three Thanksgivings!

When living abroad, sometimes you discover that your homesickness gets the better of you and you find yourself overdoing those aspects of your home culture that you miss. In America, by the time we left, there were only three holidays left:

Christmas -- When the immediate family gets together with nearby friends and relatives.
Fourth of July -- When friends and neighbors get together.
Thanksgiving -- When extended (and geographically disparate) family gets together for a once-a-year reminder of why they moved away.

So in Lugano this year, we found ourselves among dozens of homesick Americans with no family to speak of other than ourselves, so we improvised and became each other's extended family.

And then we did it again.

And then, just for good measure, did it one more time.

So we had one Thanksgiving celebration dinner on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, one on the Wednesday before, and one on Thursday itself.


Sunday night Thanksgiving at Angela Evans' apartment in Sorengo.


Angela, Jasper, Karen, Chesterton: chowing down.


Liz laughs while Angela bemoans her diseased foot: she went to the hospital later that night (all went well).


Wednesday night Thanksgiving in the college Grotto. Left to right: Professor Patrick Butler, Development Officer Alesia Keyes, Professor Rebecca Self, President's Assistant Vivien Forzano, Charlotte Zanecchia, Dean Armando Zanecchia.


When Father Carves The Duck: Dean Zanecchia makes the official first cut of the Wednesday night Thanksgiving turkey.


Constance holds Oliver, who rather suddenly discovered he was a carnivore.

All in all, it was an overstuffed and lovely week of camaraderie and binge-eating, which was followed three days later by the official arrival of my mid-life crisis...