Avery Burdette: How a Potato Gave Me a Sense of Belonging in a Foreign Country
“We’re going to miss you for Thanksgiving tonight, it’s a seafood boil instead of turkey and the whole family is coming over!”
Hiding the disappointment in my voice, I wished my mom a great Thanksgiving dinner and ended one of our frequent afternoon calls. I let my phone fall flat on my chest as I looked around my dorm room while experiencing the worst homesickness I’ve felt in a long time. It had already been two months since I had left the U.S. to study abroad at the University of Winchester in the UK and I had suddenly felt every second of it after that phone call.
Thanksgiving was not celebrated or talked about in this country, so the holiday had snuck up on me by surprise. Some international students and I had originally planned to celebrate it when the time came, but they had fallen sick or had gotten busy when the day had come.
Realizing my only option for the night was two packs of ramen, I slowly rolled off my bed and dragged myself to the outside dorm kitchen to prepare my Thanksgiving feast. Upon opening the kitchen door, I saw one of my British suitemates, Charlie, opening the fridge. His eyes looked solemnly at the inside, which was full of only sour cream, bananas, and leftovers from another suitemate.
“It looks like you’re in the same boat as me when it comes to meal-prepping,” I said after noticing the few ingredients on the shelf.
He turned and looked at me with a blank face. “I’m still new to this university thing, what about you, college senior?” he said with the typical dry British humor I’ve heard many times before.
“I guess I have no excuse to give you, I should know better by now,” I said as I sat at the kitchen table.
He started closing the fridge, but I suddenly noticed a spark in his eyes like he had just remembered something. “Isn’t today Thanksgiving? I remember one of your American friends talking about it a few days ago.”
“Yeah, unfortunately, it is. I’m disappointed about it because I was looking forward to eating something more substantial than a ramen packet for a holiday driven by food, but oh well, I forgot it was today” I told him while getting up to go get the ramen from the food cabinet.
While opening my food cabinet, I heard him opening his and then had something heavy like a rock dropped into my hoodie. I quickly grabbed at it from behind me and picked up something that also felt exactly like a rock. I brought it to the front of my vision to see a small potato lying in my palm. Confused, I turned around to see him holding a potato in his hand as well.
“It sounds like you need to celebrate your holiday full of gluttony the proper way,” Charlie said smiling. He opened both the drawer and the fridge to pull out two items which were sour cream and tinfoil. He started pre-heating the oven, changed his mind, and threw both potatoes he had wrapped in tinfoil in the oven immediately.
“While they’re cooking, I want to show you the origin of British humor,” he said before going to his room and coming back with a laptop and projector. The UK had TV licenses required for everyone, so the whole suite had been using a projector to escape it for the time being. He turned on Netflix and chose the original and British version of The Office and we watched and laughed for about 30 minutes before his timer for the potatoes went off.
He slowly pulled them out, removed the tinfoil, and put a massive portion of sour cream on them without any butter or spices. He handed me the plate with a big grin on his face and we started digging in while watching the show.
These potatoes were the most dry, undercooked, and inedible potatoes I had ever eaten. But, I had never felt so happy eating one. All the homesickness had suddenly disappeared, and I felt like I had brought my Thanksgiving tradition of eating in front of the TV with me to the UK.
This unplanned night helped me realize that home didn’t have to be a stationary place back in the U.S., but something that I could bring to distant places and enjoy in many ways, no matter how absurd the way must be.
Avery Burdette is a business major from Honea Path, South Carolina with an emphasis in accounting at Lander University. He studied abroad at The University of Winchester in England during Fall 2024. He plans to graduate from Lander in May 2025 and hopes to obtain a master’s degree in accounting by next year.