Thanksgiving in the US

          Where I come from, there are a variety of ethnic subcultures that practice many various rituals for different cultural celebrations each year. Often times, I am lucky to be able to witness and participate in those special occasions, due to the diverse range of friends I have.

            In the last four years since I have lived in the states, there is one occasion that is celebrated every year on the 27^th of November. Thanksgiving is one of the events filled with rituals and topped off with new memories every year. I had the pleasure of joining one of my teammates and her family for this wonderful holiday almost every year since I moved here.

            My teammate, Ellie and I would leave Bozeman on a Wednesday afternoon and drive for about two and a half hours get to her hometown, Great Falls. On Wednesday evenings of Thanksgiving week, the family would normally go to dinner at a popular local restaurant. This is followed by the latest movie out in the theaters. Sometimes, the kids would go to a different movie than the parents.

            The real fun begins the next morning. The whole family gets up at 7 in the morning for their annual and ritual ‘Burn the Bird’ run. Long distance running is probably my least favorite thing to do. But since it was a ritual for the family and the community of Great Falls, I had no choice but to experience it (only for my first year). Ellie’s mother usually does not do the run either. Instead, she stays home and begins preparations for the big meal that evening and I often stay back to help her in the kitchen.

            Every year, Ellie’s mother hand-makes a beautiful centerpiece with fresh flowers, for the dining table to honor the special occasion. When Ellie’s father comes home from the run, it is a ritual to turn on the football channel, where he watches his favorite team, the Steelers. He is so passionate about his team that he pulls out all his Steelers’ gears, which include towels, handkerchiefs, hats, etc., creating a shrine in hopes that his team will win.

            Ellie’s father is also always the person in-charge of taking out the turkey from the oven, and making sure the bird is cooked all the way through. Then, he carves the turkey for serving on a silver platter. As we all sit down with our plates filled with food, we joined hands to say grace before finally stuffing our faces.

            After the very fulfilling meal, the young adults and I prepare for the madness of Black Friday shopping by looking at all the catalogs, and circling down every item we could possibly want to get, for when the stores open at 2 a.m. Nowadays, Black Friday shopping starts as early as Thursday night—breaking the normal tradition and ritual. Stores are not even as chaotic and packed anymore these days, because everyone does their shopping early. I did, however, get to experience the true Black Friday shopping madness, on my first Thanksgiving in Great Falls, with the extremely long lines outside Target and the long waiting hours.

            I consider myself quite lucky to have observed and experienced Thanksgiving the way Ellie and her family does it, the true traditional American way.  

Food Photographers

If you didn't post it, did you actually eat it? Our culture today: We want the world to know that we actually DO eat. What we don't realize is, our food is getting colder by the second as we pick and adjust our filters and angles to take a picture. Honestly, our food probably taste better, if not just as good, if we didn't take a picture of it. I call this, a "foreign concept" for most of us. 

I take A LOT of pictures. Even of food sometimes. But if pictures of food are all we post on Instagram, maybe we need to find a new hobby. I know for me, when I see pictures of amazing looking food, my favorite foods from home, that friends posted, I get really upset. I don't like amazing looking food being thrown in my face and not be able to taste it. "Stop living life for others and start living for yourself". All this is doing is make me hungry. 

We all know that this is a grand scheme to impress and prove to people that we frequently "enjoy" extravagantly, lavish foods. Or perhaps, maybe some foods are just as beautiful as art that we have to capture this moment, OMG I ATE THIS!

I think it's time we enjoy the food that we are spending our hard earned money on. 

Quantity Over Quality?

Consumers from where I am from, absolutely love things that are cheap (or free). As long as products are being sold at a low price, there would be no complaints. Sometimes, people are not able to differentiate between the actual high quality products and low quality products. A lot of people that I know or have met has this mentality that cheap and large portion are the "good stuff". They are never quite bothered about the taste. But of course, this is a developing country, where money is hard to earn, inflation cause prices of all goods to increase, and high government taxes. In order to save more money, they had to sacrifice their taste buds for a little bit of savings. Taste 0-survival 1.

Often when we see coffee shops that are crowded in town, we would wonder, ''What could possible be so good here that people are actually lining up to eat?'' I would ask around to find out the specialty of the location and to my discovery, there wasn't any specialty at all. The food from every food stall are just average or the same as other coffee shops in town. I decided to conduct my own observations on a number of crowded coffee shops around town. It turned out that people just have that mentality that if there's a crowd, the food must be "great". I came to a conclusion that people are only present where the crowds are as well.