For the last 4 years I haven’t been home for Thanksgiving due to my athletic commitments. So why not miss number 5? I thought it was going to be easy, you know I’d missed it before. I kept saying to myself you’ll be alright, you haven’t been home on this day for five years now. But see this year I actually missed home more then ever for one simple fact – Ireland doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving. But even though I didn’t go home in previous years there was still that Thanksgiving atmosphere. I would either spend Thanksgiving at my coach’s home or my best friend’s house where I would normally wake up and watch the Macy’s Day parade. But see here it was just a normal Thursday. I had to attend lectures all day and then coach again at night. All day long on social media I saw tons of pictures of my friends and their families. What made it ten times worse was that Sport Changes Life held a wonderful dinner for my fellow scholars and I but sadly Alex and I couldn’t attend because we had to go to a lecture that ran at the same time as the dinner😪
I won’t lie, missing out on the festivities was starting to take a toll on me. I thought, “Will this be the first Thanksgiving that I don’t have some type of Thanksgiving food?” Even though I couldn’t go I was used to being around all of my teammates so they filled that void created by missing my family. I just wanted to be around some type of love. Then my hallmates and I received an email that our school’s International Office was holding a Thanksgiving dinner. So we, along with some other friends of ours, decided to go to the dinner. Half of the people that went to the Thanksgiving dinner had never celebrated Thanksgiving before because in Ireland it is just not a thing. The food they served included turkey, rice, sweet potatoes, Brussels spouts and carrots. You had a choice between water and Coke as a drink and finished the meal with apple pie for dessert. Before eating I suggested that we all go around and say something that we were thankful for. I started to think to myself “you’re so blessed, man. How many people can say that they got to spend Thanksgiving in another country? How many people even get to go to another country? You still get to play the game you love but most importantly I’m still alive” ❤️ As I sat at the table across with people from different backgrounds and nationalities I began to smile because a quote entered into my head that goes like this, “the best things in life are the people we love, the places we’ve been and the memories we’ve made along the way”. So even though I didn’t get to spend the day with my family, I helped seven other people experience Thanksgiving for the first time! A memory I won’t forget any time soon.
~Bless up
TC3
