This year was the first Thanksgiving that I spent away from my mom.  My entire life I’ve always spent Thanksgiving with my mother.  This was also the first Thanksgiving in over 20 years that I haven’t had a dog staring at me while I eat my Thanksgiving meal!

This year, I spent Thanksgiving in State College, PA, home of Pennsylvania State University.  The city is small.  It definitely had a college-town feel to it.  But it had one thing that I was so happy to see—a Wal-Mart.

I went to visit my brother, and we spent Thanksgiving with friends of his—a married couple (from New York City) and their infant son.

It turned out to be a very nice Thanksgiving.  My brother’s friends prepared a great meal—turkey, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and vegetables.  Desert was a fruit tart from a local grocery store.  It was a wonderful meal and I enjoyed getting to know the people I was eating it with.

My Thanksgiving meal also turned out to be somewhat inspirational.  My brother’s friend is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education.  He’s almost finished with his degree, but I can tell that he has worked hard to get to this point.  Now he’s applying for jobs and having interviews with various colleges, trying to find that special place where he can go and make a difference.    I’m so grateful that he is a friend of my brother’s and able to guide him as he works on his degree. It’s always good to meet people who know exactly what they want to do.  As we talked about our educational endeavors, it reminded me once again of why I took this chance.  Sometimes, you just need to hear someone else’s story to remember your own.

The rest of my time was spent just hanging out with my brother, watching TV, visiting the Penn State campus—which is huge, and driving around State College where you won’t have any trouble finding Penn State memorabilia.

My first Thanksgiving wasn’t bad at all.  I made it through that day and had a lot of fun.  The only downfall—I didn’t get any homework done.