The Caterpillar ISE "Family"
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Sadly, Thanksgiving is not a holiday in England, yet (see par. 2 for details). In order to have an excuse to overeat a massive variety of our favourite home-cooked meals, the ISE's (International Service Employees) for Caterpillar gathered for the annual Thanksgiving celebration today. We rented the Longthorpe Village Hall and everyone contributed food items. There were over a hundred people in attendance which made it feel a bit more like a meal at a High School Cafeteria than a typical Thanksgiving. There was also an unmistakable aura saying 'nice try, but this isn't really Thanksgiving'. It may have been the combination of getting in line behind 30 people for food, eating off floppy paper plates, wearing a nametag or writing your name on your cup that lost some of the coziness compared to an old familial T-day. And it was a pain executing the age-old tradition of going around the table and having each person say one thing they are thankful for... (darn it! he just said family, I was going to say family. How about 'living in England'- drat! she just said that.) It was a fun time to get to know all the other Cat families in the area a bit better.
It's too bad we didn't get more publicity for having this event because we could have used it as a tool to promote Thanksgiving as an actual holiday for the locals. The parallels are numerous. Foreigners landing in a land inhabited by hostile natives. Through months of halting attempts we learn to communicate and work together. The natives teach essential skills such as where to find mozzarella cheese. For our part, we teach the natives all about the American election system. Very synergistic, and a whole lot like 1620. I'm convinced they'd love the holiday. They do know more about American history than most Americans, so it is a cinch. If only we'd gotten more publicity on our meal today....
btw Matt hacked in and wrote the above post.
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