Thanksgiving!

If there is something worth celebrating in America, it is definitely their love for copious amounts of food. This is a tradition that I will most likely bring home with me - it was so good!

My first ever Thanksgiving involved a roadtrip up the East coast with "some of my favourite humans" a.k.a Ashley and Claire. Ashley actually studied in Dunedin last year and her kiwihost, Louis, is doing an internship in D.C. so we set off to pick him up. After a very entertaining night at his flat (all I can say is Marine, bunny and gun) we carried onto Connecticut to Ashley's house - but not before the 50 mcNuggets challenge.

If there is something that must be achieved while in America, it is obviously the challenge of eating 50 chicken nuggets. For the low price of about $10 I'm not sure why more people don't indulge in this delictable feast........

Yes, we managed to finish them. It was a struggle but we are no quitters.

After rolling out of Maccas we carried on our merry way...

Barbara, Ashley's Mum/Mom, warmly welcomed us into her home and it was SO nice to be in an actual home, not a dorm or a hostel. We arrived pretty late (it took us around 8 hours to get to Connecticut from DC) off to sleep in a REAL bed it was!

The next day was Thanksgiving! And how thankful we were for Barbara's cooking! We had an 18 pound Turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes (Claire's speciality), sweet potato and marshmellow casserole, green beans and water chestnuts and lots more! My favourite dish was the green beans and water chestnuts - can we get water chestnuts in NZ? They are so good!

A special mention must be made here to Tucker, the Pileika's dog. He has, what one may call, a certain affection for me.

The next night, we thought it was necessary to dance off all our excess weight from eating the entire day so we jumped on the train down to NYC. Here we met up with Louis' and Ashley's friends from when Ashley and co. were in New Zealand. It was good to be able to see the nightlife side of NYC this time. At one bar you could even do shots out of syringes.. Ashley's fear of AIDS has gone up ten fold.

We managed to stay out all night long, a fitting tribute to the city that never sleeps. At 5.30am we caught the train from Grand Central back to Conneticut.. we are now offical nomadic travellers it seems..

Catching up on some sleep in the Connecticut train station

That night, we went to Boston! We ate some traditional Boston food such as clam chowder (so good!) and Boston Baked Beans - nothing on Watties. It is a city that I definitely want to go back to as we only saw it at night time, I wish I had a million more days in this country.

In Boston we saw this amazing group of street performers who jumped over about 5 people, Louis included. This video shows it about halfway through, sorry it's on its side.

On Sunday we started a 15 hour car ride home, arriving back at Chapel Hill at 4am on Monday morning and to a stackload of assignments. Luckily I'm avoiding reality again this weekend and heading to Harry Potter world in Orlando! Wingardium Leviosa! Oh yeah, I'm a little excited.

Claire, Barbara and myself outside the Pileika's house

I'm sad to say this is one of my last posts in America, I'm in the process of finalising all my documentation and completing exams. However, I'm so excited about Europe!! My contiki is all ready to go - now to pack my life into a little suitcase again. Those who know me personally will know what a struggle this actually is for me!!

But life is always better when travelling.

Hasta luego mis amigos, un beso y abrazo grande