T-Day in the UK, an ex-pat’s experience
At the end of July 2018, I was in Pelican Rapids Minnesota visiting my sister and her family. The day before I was to leave, Andy called and said: “I have an offer to move to London for eighteen months, what do you think?” Duh.
This was not completely a surprise; the possibility of moving somewhere had been floating around since Coty announced they were buying the color cosmetic brands that were previously owned by P&G. Yet, we were still caught off guard. Andy needed to respond quickly, and we had to extricate ourselves from Towson, and the US, within three months to start our life in London on November 1, 2018.
When I said ‘yes’, I didn’t consider myself brave, or adventurous, or courageous; I do have some considerable depth of knowledge around curriculum and assessment – but that is very much a niche skill set and does not prepare a person to make rash or necessarily exciting decisions. We still don’t see ourselves as brave or adventurous – simple taking advantage of a tremendous opportunity that was placed before us (with just a little nudging).
So, here we are thirteen months into the eighteen-month assignment. Celebrating our second Thanksgiving in a country that does not celebrate Thanksgiving. We could have cooked a turkey, we could make cranberry sauce, we could even find pumpkin pie; but why? It’s not a day off for Andy; there is no lazy, sleeping in, football watching, eat an early, large dinner, day event. It’s go to work and come home by 7:30 pm, a little late to start a traditional Thanksgiving Day. Last year, we had baked chicken in our temporary apartment with the twelve-inch oven. This year, I made reservations.
A few London restaurants and pubs offer a ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving dinner. One, even includes all three NFL football games, but it was sold out long ago. Instead, we went to Duke on the Green. The ‘green’ in question is Parsons Green and is right off the Underground stop of the same name. The dinner was mostly traditional – it started with spareribs, not traditional in our experience, but tasty. It also came with four (full-sized) cocktails. All cocktails were made with Makers Mark Bourbon Whisky. Again, not traditional in our experience, but very tasty.
It was a fun and festive evening followed by today’s Black Friday sales. Even though it is not their holiday, even though there are no days off this week; Friday the 29th is still Black Friday. The stores are open, the streets are decorated; it is again, a lovely time to be in London – no courage needed, but the Makers Mark may help.