"Native" Americans

...a thanksgiving post on Christmas Eve...

I shot my semester film project over Thanksgiving weekend this year. Since no one celebrates here it didn’t occur to me when I scheduled that date. I must say though, when Thanksgiving did arrive I was crushed to be in stressful pre-production and not sitting around with all of my very much missed friends eating good food and playing celebrity. SO, I got proactive. I went to the specialty grocery store in town and pre-ordered a Turkey (not really eaten here) to be delivered a week later. The date kept getting pushed back due to finals so at last we celebrated this Sunday.
It took forever to find all the food we needed…and we NEEDED it! No one would rest until we found everything to make Thanksgiving truly Thanksgiving. I think we went to five grocery stores.
Even 5 years ago the food selection was pretty bleak in Prague, but now things are pretty accessible so I couldn’t figure out why we were having such trouble. Then it occurred to me. What’s special about Thanksgiving? The Native Americans were showing the newly arrived Europeans the foods that they DIDN’T have in Europe and would now need to make it through the winter. Foods like cranberry sauce and gravy.

So, like our ancestors we foraged through store after store for our big meal. Our final shopping trip occurred the day of “Praha Thanksgiving 08” with me running through the aisles of Tesco until I reached K. “I found sweet potatoes!!!” “They have sweet potatoes?!?! Show me!” “This way! Come! Quick!” And we gazed upon sweet potatoes with the amazement our ancestors must of felt upon seeing this delicious thing come out of the ground. However, a few hundred years later and my part switched. Now WE are the Native Americans once again bringing new foods to the Europeans...well, Eastern Europeans-in this case a Montenegrin, Bulgarian, Czech, and Turk. It went over pretty well. They loved Thanksgiving. We skipped “celebrity” cause I don’t really know any Eastern European celebrities but we did all hang out in front of the TV and watched a movie. Just doing my part to show Europe our American culture.