Thanksgiving Overseas

I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving and have many things to be thankful for. For me, I am thankful for my beautiful wife, our jobs, home and family, the right to get married (at least in some places) and for every day that my grandmother is still on this earth.

I am also thankful that I have spent, and hopefully will spend again, holidays such as thanksgiving overseas.

Not because I want to be apart from my family. I don't.

But holidays for those at post are an interesting time, especially holidays that are particularly American. Usually, all of the "orphans" at post, those who can't go home to the states and don't have large families at post, get together at one person's house. And aside from the fact that the folks there aren't related (so the event lacks some of the strain that sometimes exists at the holidays), the event looks very much like an American Thanksgiving. In Jerusalem, we had turkeys and all the trimmings. Everyone brought something, and most tried to make something from their own holiday traditions.

There was even occassionally, if the timing worked and the host had AFN (Armed Forces Network...another thing to be thankful for overseas!), football to be watched after the gorging.

And the sense of community was super strong.

I miss that. I am thankful for it.