The First Thanksgiving... Abroad

I know it was Thanksgiving on Thursday, but it still doesn't feel like it. This was the first one I wasn't able to spend with my family in Ohio. Just like my Mom, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's just about being together and being thankful for what you have. I missed my family, turkey, football... but we decided to celebrate in our own way. 

Even though we obviously don't get time off work for Thanksgiving here, B took a couple days and we went to Portugal for a long weekend! We also met up with a friend of mine from college, along with her family. For anyone who isn't familiar with university Greek life, you typically have a "family" in your sorority or fraternity: a "Big" who is a year above you, a "Little" a year below you, a "Grand Little," and so on. Small world that it is, my "Big" now lives in Naples, Italy and we've gotten back in touch recently. 

At a theme party in college - the good old days!

We got together in Rome back in June (I'll cover our trip in my next post!), and planned to meet up in Lisbon for Thanksgiving. Hard to believe we're both married (and she has a beautiful baby girl) and living in Europe! We've gone from dancing at sorority socials to visiting Ancient Roman ruins and scaling to the top of 8th century castles.

How times have changed!

It certainly wasn't the traditional Thanksgiving experience. We shared Portuguese wines and tapas instead of turkey and stuffing, and viewed a choir singing in an old Cathedral instead of football. Although, we did try... we actually spent a couple hours wandering around in the rain, trying to find a place to watch American football -- we even tried the Hard Rock Cafe! I know, shame on me. I usually have a rule to avoid all things Hard Rock, TGIFriday's, McDonald's, etc. while traveling, but we made an exception for "The Big Game" (Ohio State vs. Michigan). 

I'll go into more detail about our trip another time, but all in all, it was a good first Thanksgiving abroad. We couldn't be home with our families, but it was nice to be with my ZTA family and, of course, the man whose face brings a smile to mine (even with his "Movember" stache). Never hurts to check off another city and country on our list either! 

I have a lot to be thankful for :)