Photos by Sonja Reeves
Alus Kunwar carved the 22-pound turkey for the 20 or so foreign students at the Mankato home of Nata and Keir Townsend celebrating what was for many a new holiday. There were students from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Morocco, some of them participants in MSU's Friendship Family program.
Foreign students from Nepal and Sri Lanka sat in a circle to play "Gotti," a game played with five small stones that's roughly similar to jacks. It's typically a women's game, they said, but some guys tried their hands.
Turkish grad student Ahmet Dursun (left) and Moroccan student Othman Bennani prepared the stuffing.
Yohani Vidana Gamage got to frolic in her first snowfall and eat her first Thanksgiving turkey, all in 24 hours. And it was good.
“I’m enjoying it,” said Vidana Gamage, a Minnesota State University student who arrived here from Sri Lanka three months ago. Last night, she just stood at a window and admired the white stuff as it fell.
Ahmet Dursun, a Turkey native who has been a graduate student at MSU for about five months, is still getting the hang of the holiday.
He’s well on his way, having already got the parts about the turkey and the huge gathering down. They were two of the 20 or so foreign students enjoying Thanksgiving at the Mankato home of Keir and Nata Townsend, who sign up each year for the school’s Friendship Family Program.
It helps foreign students adjust to life in America and gives local families new perspectives. The Townsends are officially matched with only a handful of students throughout the year, Nata says, but many more are invited to Thanksgiving.
Keir gave an impromptu description of the first Thanksgiving, when the Native Americans lent a hand and a feast to the struggling pilgrim settlers.
An hour or so later, Nepali student Alina Rayamaji summarized: “ The ship ... and the people, and they stayed with the Indians.”
Easier to recall, especially after eating, was the part about “ lots and lots of food.” Likewise, Moroccan student Othman Bennani was wondering before the meal about the origins of Thanksgiving, but after eating he was satisfied.
“It’s wonderful,” he said with a huge grin.
Keir Townsend said it’s about “family, a good meal and the good luck to have a place to share it.”
The Nepali students brought a delicious dumplinglike food, filled with turkey instead of the usual pork, called “momo.”
The holiday’s staple food is available back home, foreign students said, but rare.
Religious dietary restrictions prevented at least one student from eating the turkey, but most people dug right in.
Thanksgiving, with its simple rules about gathering with family, eating and having a good time, reminded some students of celebrations at home.
Dursun, the Turkish student, said it reminded him of Muslim holidays, and others remembered the Sri Lankan New Year, Avurudu. Perhaps most like Thanksgiving is Dashain, a Nepalese harvest festival in which people gather and eat goat.
Nata Townsend said she wants to expose her two children, ages 7 and 9, to different cultures, to teach them that “opening your door to people from different nations isn’t strange.”
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