Malia Kuo

Being an international student in the U.S. for Thanksgiving can be hard if all of your American friends are with their families while you’re far from yours. Since moving to Yale’s campus, we have all created a home for ourselves in New Haven. I like to think that your friends become your family and you get to spend the holiday celebrating with them. Whether it’s your college friends or your childhood friends, Thanksgiving becomes a time to share with your second family. After all, Thanksgiving is all about being grateful for all that you have.

Reuniting with my childhood friends — who I hadn’t seen since leaving for college almost four months ago — made me feel at home again. Back home in Turkey, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but the idea of pausing to give thanks and share a meal felt universal — and deeply comforting in a new country. Hearing about their new lives and sharing my new adventures reminded me how much I had missed them. Reminiscing about our memories together highlighted how lucky we are to have each other and showed me the best part of Thanksgiving: the connections we cherish.

Exploring a new city, planning a trip in a new country, and going out to nice dinners made me realize how much my friends and I are now doing the activities I used to do with my family. While having our first American Thanksgiving dinner together, we decided to make this our tradition. We agreed to meet every year during Thanksgiving break, explore a new destination, catch up on each other’s lives and be grateful for the incredible bond we share.

I also cherished the opportunity to introduce some of my childhood friends to my college friends and merge my two “families.” It became our version of one whole family gathering to celebrate the holiday. Meeting each other’s friends and sharing stories gave us a sense of comfort, knowing that all international students create their own unique versions of Friendsgiving.

Being away from my college friends for a week also made me realize how much I’ve gotten used to having them around. From sharing meals to studying together to going out, we’ve become an inseparable family these past few months. Even during the break, I yearned to update them on everything I was doing and share all of my new discoveries with them.

Experiencing my first Thanksgiving made me reflect on all the things I’m incredibly grateful for: my sister, my parents, my school, my new life and the friends I get to share it with. This holiday marked a transition to embracing my new life in a new country with my second family.

Getting to spend my Thanksgiving with my childhood friends and sharing stories about my college friends — who feel like my home away from home — made me realize how truly thankful I am to have all of them. It’s moments like these that made Friendsgiving one of my new favorite traditions.