This year would be the first year in my life that I wouldn’t be able to participate in a proper American Thanksgiving with my family. The closest thing to Thanksgiving in Korea is the Chuseok festival which takes place in early October, but during the last week of November, while my friends from back home would have the week off, I would be going about a normal school week. However, this didn’t mean that I wouldn’t have any kind of celebration on Thanksgiving day.

It turns out that while the new season of the show “Stranger Things” would release the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, in Korea it would release on a Thursday because of the time zone difference, which was technically, or technically not, the day of Thanksgiving. Several of my friends and I love the show “Stranger Things” and we were excited for the release of the new season, so we planned to do a watch party that Thursday night when it released.

In preparation for our party, we all brought snacks, ordered pizza and my friend from Japan even made Stranger Things themed desserts. One of the desserts was made out of melted chocolate shaped into the head of the Demogorgon monsters with strawberries in it, and she also made brownies decorated with Christmas lights in reference to Joyce Byer’s house from season one.

We carried all of our snacks to the International Building on campus, and we used a computer to play the show on the projector in one of the classrooms. It felt like we got to watch the show in the movie theater, and at the same time felt like the class parties I used to have in middle school. While it wasn’t exactly Thanksgiving, it was my honorary Thanksgiving for my semester in Korea. After all, Thanksgiving is about different people coming together and sharing food and culture. And it was also fitting to be able to do something together with my friends on this day, because this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the experiences, and friends I got to share them with, that I’ve made during my semester in Korea.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: Dankook University