By Christina AlexanderThe Daily Northwestern

I spent Thanksgiving in a sari. Well, a lengha to be exact.

When I came to Northwestern from Upstate New York, I knew there would be many opportunities for me to experience new cultures and people. But I guess I thought I’d be doing it in my own clothes.

I went home for Thanksgiving freshman year; I hopped an Amtrak train home for what was supposed to be a 14-hour train ride. After about seven hours in delays – including one two-hour pause about 50 miles from my station – I arrived home just in time to have missed dinner and all my visiting relatives. Hurray for the holidays.

Sophomore year I wised up and went home with my roommate for an Italian Turkey Day. I grabbed a gift – my mom raised me right – and headed out to Addison without a second glance. It was great. I got tipsy. Before we ate.

This year, now smart enough to understand the value of being a Thanksgiving mooch, I bemoaned the high price of airline tickets and my previous disastrous experience with the train to anyone and everyone who would listen.

My sorority sisters sympathized with me and one offered to let me spend the holiday with her. So, I drove out to Naperville – in a borrowed car, I might add – with my friend for an Indian Thanksgiving.

Which explains my midriff baring ensemble, which I actually asked to wear.

In my defense, I would have felt completely outstaged by the other women’s outfits if I hadn’t. (They were brightly colored and beaded. I was in classic New England dress … i.e. versatile, but mostly varying shades of black.)

And I’ve learned that you need to go full out when it comes to trying on someone else’s family traditions. Don’t even think about complaining; consider it broadening your horizons.

You have to trade in cranberry sauce still in the shape of the can it came in for potato samosas, gobi and taco dip.

You realize that while you have a simple Thanksgiving dinner in the early afternoon, your hosts are throwing a full-scale dinner party run on Indian Standard Time that won’t start until 9 p.m. and will go into the wee hours of the night.

The seven people you celebrate with turn into a gathering of at least 24 relatives, none who will remember if your name is Kristin, Christine or Christina.

You help an aunt get through her glass of wine so she can travel to New Zealand, the next stop on your host’s father’s trip around the world in wine.

And you have a blast abandoning your family in favor of another – sorry, Bips.

Because A) No one else’s family will ever drive you as crazy as your own does. Especially the grandmas. Everyone else’s is cute; yours is just plain crazy. B) People always find a way to make you feel welcome around the holidays.

Besides, some holiday traditions no one messes with.

There will always be a kids table. You will always have to sit at it – whether you’re age 5 or 55. Your relatives will be proud of you but won’t tell you. Instead they’ll harp on the fact that you have to work on Thanksgiving Day or that your crazy friend’s princess crown tattoo is showing (oops).

Everybody’s parents go crazy over the preparations, but then, when you cannot possibly put another dish on the table for fear it will collapse, people say what they’re thankful for and who they’re missing.

So I’m thankful I have enough friends to take me in – despite their worries I’ll divulge stories about their crazy families – and that the train service is bad enough my mom doesn’t demand I come home.

I’m thankful that Northwestern is on the quarter system, so it doesn’t make any sense for me to fly 800 miles for three days at home.

And I’m thankful that I will never have to worry that what makes Thanksgiving for me will ever be missing from anyone’s table.

I mean, everybody eats pumpkin pie.

Holiday Guide Editor Christina Alexander is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].