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BARAN | No Place Like Home

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Home for Fall Break. For Thanksgiving. For the deliciously long Winter Break. Back to familiar haunts, faces and foods. The mildly annoying barrage of “back at it” Snapchats and Instagram posts.

thanksgiving

What is Thanksgiving Without Turkey?

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While food is often what brings us all together, it’s the company and people you surround yourself with that leads to extended trips, family yoga classes, snuggling up on the couch to watch a movie or sticking around for breakfast the day after.

Columns

SONG | I Left My Grandpa Behind in China

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My parents packed all their luggage in one just bag when they came to the United States from China. That’s a story my family loves to tell over and over again — the layers of coats my mother wore so she could bring over all her clothes, the prized kitchen knife my father snuck past security, the Scott McKenzie song playing on the airplane when they first landed. But I never quite thought about what my parents couldn’t pack — the scallion pancakes from the shack downstairs in their province, my mother’s pink bike she rode for three days on a road trip, the Napa cabbage blooming behind their old home. All their brothers, sisters, cousins. Those were all faint elements I knew existed, but never saw for myself.

Columns

RUSSELL | Love and Loathing in Upstate New York

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Last summer, I fell victim to my longings for spontaneity and crashed a wedding. The hunt for viable festivities took guts and perseverance, but once I arrived at the venue’s floral walkway with my date for the evening, we knew our labor was worthwhile. Inside, it seemed to be the aftermath of a rowdy affair. The drunk aunts and uncles rocked and gyrated on the edge of the dance floor with blank stares that make you want to give them a pillow and a blanket. In the middle were the three of four most passionate couples, rubbing up against each other in slow motion as the DJ spun his late night playlist of R&B songs you don’t recognize until the chorus.

Columns

DUGGAL | The Struggle of Giving Thanks

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This year was the first year I headed home for Thanksgiving. Most of campus tends to clear out the week of Thanksgiving Break, and usually, I am just another immigrant millennial headed to one of their American friends’ homes to gobble down some turkey and stuffing (and chocolate covered strawberries if I get lucky). This year, however, the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services decided to come in clutch and schedule my citizenship test the week after Thanksgiving. I was headed home to the aggressively Southern state of Texas to take my citizenship test, and spend some quality time giving thanks with my parents in the process. The idea of family bonding is not lost on my family.

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There's No Place Like Home

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Last Saturday I squeezed ten mostly unrelated friends into my tiny studio apartment. They drank my drinks, they annoyingly touched my things, the usual. But as they sat on my bed, my desk, my counter and a rogue table which usually holds up several tons of not-quite-dirty clothes from the abyss of the floor, they complained about the lack of ergonomically correct devices they referred to as “chairs.”