What is Thanksgiving? You’ll probably answer with: “It’s an American holiday and as the name suggests, it’s an occasion for people to be thankful for all the blessings in their lives.” But what’s the origin of Thanksgiving? When the Pilgrims arrived in America, they had trouble growing crops and in 1620 that lead to a famine that killed half of the Pilgrims. Fortunately for them, the Wampanoag tribe taught them how to farm on their soil and later in 1621 the Pilgrims had their first successful harvest. The Wampanoag tribe was then invited to a feast known as the “First Thanksgiving.”
As a non-US citizen, I was very curious to see how people celebrate Thanksgiving because it’s taken very seriously. Growing up, I used to love Thanksgiving specials on shows like “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Simpsons.” I knew the basics of Thanksgiving, but have never experienced it.
The food is fantastic, I never knew that turkey and cranberry sauce can go together so well. What I really appreciate about this holiday is the opportunity to reflect on your life and realize how many things we should be grateful for. I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving with my family and it was very sweet to have the whole day to keep saying how much we mean to each other. I’d say this experience has brought us closer in a way.
This was a very successful first Thanksgiving. Here’s to many more!
Halloween is arguably one of the most fun holidays. You can dress up like a banana, a zombie cheerleader, or even a cat. However, a certain kind of costume that is not acceptable, comes around every year. Those costumes fall into a small category: when people adopt the aspects and features of another race or culture as a costume, a joke. Some examples of this are blackface and yellowface where people will literally paint a color onto their skin to make them look like a different race. Halloween is not the proper place to display your racial microaggressions. You may not even be aware of them, most people aren’t. Microaggressions are when you say a racial slur or dress up as another race to make fun of them. Actions like these showcase how unaware our society is to the amount of cultural appropriation we experience on a daily basis. Some may take this as it not being okay to dress up as their favorite movie character of a different race, but that is not the case. Little kids can dress up as Mulan, Pocahontas, and Tiana, because they are doing it out of admiration, not disrespect. It is hard to identify when a costume goes from okay to bad. If you think someone will be offended by your costume then odds are it isn’t appropriate.
In 2012, a group of students at Ohio State University, known as STARS (Students Teaching About Racism in Society), made a series of posters to showcase this problematic Halloween trend. It is a series of six posters each picturing an offensive costume representing a racial stereotype, an actual person representing that racial group, and the same line: “You wear the costume for one night, I wear the stigma for life.”
And this is so true. Coming from a place of privilege, I don’t understand the type of oppression people of color receive on a daily basis; neither do any of the people who dress up as stereotypes of a culture. If you dress up as a racial stereotype, then you most likely don’t know anything about that particular culture’s daily oppression. People who don blackface or dress up as a nerdy Asian never have to live in the skin of people of color. They don’t have to wake up knowing they’ll be judged for the amount of pigment in their skin. Most people dress up as stereotypical racial figures to make fun, not knowing anything about what it’s actually like to be who they’re dressed up as. On November 1st, you can wake up in your safety bubble of skin and go on with life, but the group of people you made fun of the night before will continue to wear the skin and/or identity that you appropriated as a costume.
Sometimes I contemplate whether or not after high school I should take a gap year. There’s so many things to learn by simply traveling and exploring, and I wonder if there’s too many possible adventures to simply get done in a life time. I can’t imagine them all as I’m stuck in school doing essays, endless math problems, and projects, but I hope.
As much as I picture myself being an ambitious law student in the heart of New York City, I begin to stalk the traveler pages of Instagram who share their passions to the world, and wonder how life like that would be. To take life one step at a time without a care in the world about the future. To travel freely, explore different cultures, or learn for mere enjoyment rather than cramming in information for a final exam.
I’ve had the privilege to travel before. From galloping horses through Ireland’s terrain to swimming with stingrays in the Cayman Islands, highlights of my life have always included traveling. But if I’m honest with myself, I probably won’t become one of those people who are in a new country every week, and that’s okay, but there are two things I know I want to do before I die.
Backpacking through Europe. This has always been on the top of my bucket list. I just want to go with a group of friends traveling city to city via train, bike ride through Amsterdam, go to the art museums in France, or swim in the oceans of Greece. There’s so many opportunities in Europe that there wouldn’t need to be a full agenda to make the trip enjoyable.
Photo Credit: weheartit.com
2. A horseback riding safari through Africa. I didn’t even know this was a thing until a couple months ago, but it’s been on my mind ever since. I’ve always wanted to go on an African safari, but being able to do it on horseback would make it ten times better. Just picturing galloping through the Savannas near the zebras and the antelope under the bright sun, it seems to surreal to be true, but it is.
These are just two things out of a dozen. The world is so big that exploring every inch of it in such a short time seems impossible. But I want to make sure that I discover as much of it as I can.
There’s just something that is so painfully cheesy and overall too varnished about the music released during Christmas time.
I don’t understand how or why Christmas has become an even more Hallmarked holiday for romance than Valentines Day.
I am very accepting of the concepts of caring and giving that provide the foundation for Christmas, but there’s something about the influx of songs talking about finding true love due to Christmas Magic that really does not sit well with me.
Maybe it’s because I actually am Scrooge, but maybe not. I’m not sure.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I subconsciously believe most things meant to be cute and sweet are extraneous.
Which, upon further reflection, basically means I am the Grinch all year round.
Once Thanksgiving ended, a Christmas frenzy descended upon us, showering everyone in festive store windows, holiday sales, and, most importantly, Michael Bublé’s Christmas album (although Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” is also very important).
The Grove’s Christmas tree has gone up, holiday candy has dominated stores, people are driving through town with green fir trees strapped on the top of their cars, and Disneyland’s Christmas celebration has been in full swing since November 8.
Kids are about to go on break, adults are taking time off work, and family members are hopping on planes, getting in their cars, or hopping in taxis to see their loved ones for the holidays.
After our cruel finals week, holiday break begins, and with that comes holiday movies, candy, parties, and relaxation (hopefully). But, it also gives everyone a chance to recharge, and spend more time with family and friends.
Thanksgiving is almost here, and with that comes a week-long break from school, which I am truly grateful for. Lately, to be able to make it through the school day I have had to go to bed at 9 pm.
I am basically a grandma.
But soon, everyone, including myself, will get to take a break from school, and hopefully, will get to go without alarm clocks and schoolwork for a week to recharge.
For those who celebrate Thanksgiving, we can stuff our faces full of turkey (or Tofurky for the vegans?), stuffing, and pie. And then we can all fall into a deep food coma.
Photo Credit: Giphy
There’s also Black Friday, which is just a shopping free-for-all, where people lose their minds over the sales and rip flat screens out from other shoppers’ hands.
And, right when Thanksgiving ends, it’s basically Christmas, so I’m pumped.
Now all California needs is COLD WEATHER (and rain, obviously).
The first time he saw her was in an airport. A Petri dish of festering emotion and sickening crowds. He’d caught a wisp of her trailing at the corner of his vision, it was only a glimpse, but as he straightened himself back to forward, he knew she wasn’t just a figment of his travel addled mind. As he took a breath and grabbed his bag, a woman in a tight pencil skirt and a ponytail that seemed to pull at even her toes, came and rammed into him, sending him rocking back onto his heels, his brain rattling around like a drunk entering a dark apartment.
He continued toward his connection flight. Through the stifling heat and the crying couples, the chauffeurs with the fancy polysyllabic names spewed across expensive card stock, the pilots walking around with more purpose in their gaze than the entirety of the travelers bulging around them. The click of heels, the swish of slippers and everything fuzzy. He hated flying. He hated the people rushing around like plague bacteria happy to infect the next and the next. He wished he had a storm of anesthetic to clear away the sappy couples, the reuniting, the departing, the people too important to even breathe.
The people with screaming kids were especially bad this time. He flew all the time. He flew in winter. He flew in summer. He flew in spring and sometimes he even flew in autumn. He found his terminal, it was crowded, with lines already formed and spilling out into the walkways. Making irritable people even more irate.
“No Todd I told you it was 6:30. How long has my mom been stuck in JFK?” A pause. “No Todd it’s not okay, it’s not okay at all. She’s eighty! And she’s been stuck in JFK for five hours!”
Now there. There is a relationship that is moving fast, slipping down a slippery slope. It’ll be done in three months tops. He put an earbud in and turned his attention to another airport conversation. His own.
“No, mom, it was delayed. I’m still in Dallas.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes I’ll make it back in time.” It was getting dark. His head was rattling with every breath he took. “Thanks, bye mom, I love you.” He was going to hang up before she said anything else. He did.
He could psychoanalyze himself, he was cynical, very much stuck, but he wasn’t going to do that. There was no fun in that.
Photo Credit: The Telegraph – Rex Features
There was a blip. It seemed as if someone had set the world back a half-minute or badly spliced an old movie together. He blinked. Pursed his lips to one side. That was definitely sleep deprivation and yet, there, there was that baby’s cry again. He inclined his head toward the sound but it was gone, lost in the cacophony of other airport noises. He turned back to forward, only to move six inches forward and hit another abrupt stop. He really hated airports. He ran a hand through his hair making a bad situation worse.
“Oh for God’s sake, how long can this take?” A stranger breathes out. He was a small wiry man with the barrel chest of a Doberman pincer. A contradiction in every sense of the word. The man was innately untrustworthy in his eyes, yet somehow he couldn’t help but agree with the man, a vaguely troubling notion. He shoved the other earbud in, content to cease in his airport judging.
By the time he reached the back of the plane he had exhausted all of his music, which wasn’t saying much. He had very little music, and even less photos. He didn’t have much of anything on his phone, in fact.
He was in the farthest row back, cramped by the window, stuck between life-preserving plastic and the man with the dog’s chest. He could feel it, this flight was going to be obscenely long.
It is now mid October, and IT’S STILL SUNNY AND WARM IN OJAI. This irritates me to no end, which means this post will be a long rant.
In Ojai, and pretty much all of Southern California, three of our seasons are summer, and the fourth season is kind of cold, but not really. This means, there is a very good chance that Halloween will be a warm, sunny day. There will also be no cool decorations around town like the Jack O’Lanterns in Chicago (pictured).
Disneyland, scary movies, and cold weather are all things I associate with Halloween. But, obviously the cold weather part isn’t exactly true for California.
But, Halloween is still one of my favorite holidays, whether it’s 80 degrees (ew) or 50. And, The Tower of Terror is closing at California Adventures, which is an amusement park tragedy. But it’s all ok, because after Halloween, Thanksgiving Break will be closer than ever.
Sweaters are sweaty. Pumpkin spice burns your chapped, sunburnt lips. The adorable pinterest-esque fall leaves are more often represented by crunchy, dehydrated grass. Football games are too often stadiums crowded with sweaty bodies. The weather is less “let’s wear infinity scarves and drink hot cocoa” and more “let’s crank up the A/C and never leave the […]
September 11th, a grave day in history that will never be forgotten, forever looming over our history like the dust and debris that was left after the world trade center was hit. To some this day is almost insignificant, and to some this day means more than anything else.
Most people remember it as the day that the United States was attacked. Before the attack, September eleventh was simply just another day of the year. But after that attack, just mentioning the day “September 11th” brought a hush to a crowd, or caused someone to look down in sorrowful remembrance. For some people it made them feel uncomfortable, for some people sad, and some people resentful. I’ve seen all of these reactions. But what I saw the most was acceptance, not because people didn’t care, but because to a certain extent nothing could be done; the plane crash couldn’t be taken back, the lives lost couldn’t be brought back and the birthdays, as insignificant as it might seem, would never be the same.
My older sister had her 7th birthday on September 11th. Now, being that I was three years old when the attack took place, I don’t remember what I was doing, or what we were doing that day for my sister’s birthday, but I can almost promise you that with a catastrophe like that, her birthday was altered in some way.
I remember that I didn’t really understand what was happening when my parents tried to explain to me that the plane had crashed into the world trade center. For a three-year-old, death is an unfathomable idea, let alone combined with the catastrophe of 9/11 accompanying it.
As the years have rolled by, September 11th has become less of a painful reminder of what was lost that day. However, the pain that was caused will never fully disappear. The disheartened look that people get in their eyes when my sister says that her birthday is on September 11th will never go away, the damage that was done to hundreds of other families, to the world trade center and to our nation will never go away. But like human nature, we learn how to deal with it and accept it.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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