Thanksgiving at UMass Amherst

By Madeline Rosene on November 9, 2012

Thanksgiving is coming up fast and many UMass Amherst students will be going home to celebrate with their family. But what do international students do for Thanksgiving? It would be pretty expensive to fly to another country for a week and then travel again shortly after for the holiday season in December.

UMass is looking for people to host international students over Thanksgiving break. According to the announcement on In the Loop News for Staff and Faculty on the UMass website,

“The International Programs Office is inviting staff, faculty and friends around town to host international students for a Thanksgiving Dinner on Nov. 22.

Far away from home, international students will really appreciate a taste of American home life during the Thanksgiving holiday. Contact Richard Yam to host international students for a Thanksgiving dinner, and note the maximum number of students you can host.”

One international student, Tobias Bomhan, from Germany, said he signed a form at UMass orientation that would set him up with families in Amherst that would host him on holidays. Tobias said the people involved in the program are always very nice and normally interested in learning about other countries. Tobias is dining with a family on Thanksgiving that he knows fairly well from other occasions when they’ve had him over for meals but this will be Tobias’s first Thanksgiving ever.

Many international students have never experienced a Thanksgiving dinner, so if you live in Amherst and have some extra room at the table, you might think about inviting them over.

image from holidays.kaboose.com

Since you probably have all of your plans in place for this year, make sure to remember that next year the UMass MinuteMen Marching band will be playing at the Macy’s Day Parade in New York City on November 28th, 2013.

Dan Carrol, a member of the UMass marching band will be a senior next year and will get to take part in the Macy’s Day Parade. Dan says on the subject,

“We applied, our director sent in a tape of our field show from last year, and they selected us. We even had a guy from the planning committee come and surprise some people in what we thought was a taping for a promotional video for the school, but was actually all for us. It’ll be our 150th anniversary, so they liked that aspect as well… Usually when we travel, we sleep on gym floors, but they were having trouble finding a high school for us to stay at, so we’re staying at a Marriott in Times Square Tuesday and Wednesday night cause you have to have a 2 night reservation that weekend

so we get a free day in Manhattan on the Tuesday before!”

So if you have a chance to be in New York City for Thanksgiving next year, you can see all of your friends from the marching band in the Macy’s Day Parade and if not, maybe you can catch them on TV!