Tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving. I know this because Jeff’s Canadian classmate invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner tonight.

This got me to thinking about being an expat and missing things from home. Living overseas we embrace new cultures, traditions and foods, and yet, there are things we cling to, yearn for and miss. Holidays and the traditions around those holidays are some of those things. The great thing is that it brings expats together, not just people from the same nationality, but expats across nationalities since we are all somewhere other than the places we grew up experiencing those traditions and we all know what it means to miss them.

So on this, our first celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving, our group in Edinburgh, Scotland consisted of one Canadian, three Americans, two Mexicans, one Greek, and one Dutch person. Our menu was eclectic as well. There is no turkey to buy in the store, you need to special order it from a butcher. There is no canned pumpkin for pie. There is a Mexican import store that normally has it (they have some American products in there as well), but my source there told me that there was a late harvest in the US for pumpkins so production was delayed and stock will not arrive until late. He promised me it would be here in time for American Thanksgiving (fingers crossed!). There also were no cranberries, not even canned! The roast chicken, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, broccoli casserole (Jeff’s holiday favorite) home made bread, mashed potatoes, root veg, and brussel sprouts were delicious and made better by the wonderful company from all over the world. Our dessert was Greek, mosaiko, creamy chocolate and crunchy biscuits!

So Happy Thanksgiving Canada!