Saturday, November 29, 2008

How To Spend Thanksgiving Abroad

What up, what's happenin' folk? Thanksgiving has come and passed & I'm definitely thankful to say that I had a great alternative to our beloved American holiday. I was a little worried about how it would go earlier this week. I had just come back to Rome (I'll speak on that soon), had a paper to write, was stuck in my typical end of the semester depression (Side Note: Can we get a diagnosis on that? I'm saying, if seasonal affective disorder is real, should they have something like semester pressure disorder? I'ma have to get up with Morehouse School of Medicine & step my pharmacuetical game up), and had mad stuff to rehearse for our Showcase (Dec. 10th! eek!), so I wasn't in the typical Thanksgiving mood when Thursday rolled around.

It started hit me real hard: no football, no cranberry sauce, no long ass wait for dinner (lol, maybe that wasn't too bad. haha.), but most importantly no holding hands with my kinfolk, praying, and then breaking bread. But I made peace with it & reminded myself that I have very little to complain about in comparision to all that I'm blessed with, so let's get it in at dinner. IES, our program, had reservations for everyone (like 50 people) to have a special Thanksgiving dinner at Town Bar & Grill. This was a big thing, since Thanksgiving doesn't exsit out of the US & the restaurant was nice enough to make a specialized menu for us with a turkey dish & pumpkin pie for dessert.

Now from the name of the place, I didn't know how nice the place was gonna be. It sounded kinda homely, a comfortable type restaurant. Naw brotha, this joint was a classy, sophisticated, white tablecloth type spot. Of course, as soon as I staked out a corner table for the group I was with, I headed straight to the bathroom to put the restaurant to ultimate test. You know a place isn't high quality unless they have a clean & efficient bathroom. Walk in, I see shining bathroom fixtures & clean tiles, actuall stalls (hit me up if you wanna know why this is such a nice thing, I don't wanna spoil the story with TMI), and they got actual hand towel instead of paper towels, so this place is already batting 1.000 with me.

Everyone finally gets to dinner, the wine is poured, the conversation begins flowing smoothly & Thanksgiving is starting to feel like home in a new way. We waited until after our first course to share what we were thankful for, but when we did, it was such a beautiful moment. Being able to open up and be reflective and vulnerable with a group of strangers (here meaning people that don't know you very well) is such a invaluable experience. I get a chance to see that so much every summer at MLW, but because of that I always forget about the small miracles that can be made the same way through theater. Wine, gourmet food, clean bathrooms and a nice circle of friends is definitely a great alternative to the Thanksgiving traditions I've loved all my life.

Side story: So we're usually on a 1 or 2 drink limit at IES paid-for outings. Not a problem at dinner cause I like to savor my wine, I ain't gonna be knocking it back anyway. Well, we're going around saying what we're thankful for, complete with cheers at the end of each mini-speech. There are 7 people at our table, so you can imagine that my glass of wine ain't lasting too long with all these cheers to go around. We're joking about this & then see the waitress over at another IES table re-filling glasses & then my roommate comes over laughing about how the waitress filled his glass up to the top. So, I'm thinking we're on a 2 drink limit tonight. Cool. I down my drink during the cheers & just wait for the waitress to come top us off. Well, 10 minutes later, I'm having a conversation with someone & I see that my wine glass has disappeared. Not cool, Joe. Everyone else still has their glasses & has wine, so I'm paranoid like who stole my drink? I ask a waitress about it & she shuts me down with the quickness like "You're only allowed 1 drink. You'll have to speak to the hostess if you want more wine." I'm feeling slighted, cause I saw the other waitress re-filling, but I just gotta suck it up and enjoy my main course with a glass of water instead. You know a brotha can't show out over a glass of wine when a) I ain't paying for the dinner anyway b) I'm the only black person in the spot c) its a super classy, white tablecloth joint d) our group consists of toddlers compared to the other patrons in the restaurant (you woulda swore it was 65+ date night in there). Its whatever, everyone else offered their wine to me (so I got mine), but still there are principalities to this shit, Smokey! lol

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(I got mad compliments for my shirt. Two things Kevin shouldn't have at once: wine & compliment. Swagger is at 100 right now!)

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