Hi everyone!

I hope you enjoyed your holidays and are preparing for the last leg of this semester (I know I am).

As excited as I have been about my time in Brazil and all the adventures I been on, I have been feeling a little homesick. Part of these feelings are due to all the happenings back home that I feel like I am missing out on but most of it is due to the holiday season. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

There are many reasons why this holiday is so special to me: the gathering of family, remembering all the blessing of the year, the food, and the traditions. I decided to take these feelings of homesickness that I was experiencing and do something. So I called home got recipes and set myself to make a Thanksgiving feast with the help of a few friends.

I was very proud of what we had accomplished not just sharing food with the families and friends we have made during this semester but sharing part of our culture. This whole semester we have immersed ourselves in the Salvador, Bahia, Brazil culture learning about food, history, cultural norms and expectations, Candomble (an afro-Brazilian religion), their universal healthcare system (SUS), and various social movements. Celebrating Thanksgiving gave us an opportunity to share with our homestay families a little bit about where we come from.

This got me to thinking about the diversity on the USG campus, which is something that many universities across America lack. Many of my friends on campus have family and loved ones many miles away. While their address is in the US, home is in another country. Some of the people I know haven’t been able to go back home for various reasons but I know they miss it very much.

If in only 10 weeks I was experiencing these feeling of homesickness, I can only imagine those around campus that have been away from home for 1 year, 5 years or 10 years. I’m sure there are many traditions that each of us cherish from our countries and/or cultures and I would love to hear about them! Take a moment and ask your friends about their traditions, holidays, and culture. Thanks to the diversity at our campus we do not need to travel far to learn about a culture different then our own, it’s all just around the grove.