Happy December 1st! It’s unreal that so much time has passed already and our classes are finishing up! So much and so little has happened that I’m not quite sure what to make of this odd sophomore fall. Oh well, I’ll wait for the New Years to think about it more.
Chocolate chip cookies I baked on Saturday night before leaving for Wellesley
Thanksgiving Break just ended. I went to visit my sister in New York! We have a 14 year age gap, so we didn’t talk too much until I moved to the States for college – now, I stop by her place every so often during my breaks. This Thanksgiving, her whole family was there: her husband Jeremy, Jeremy’s older brother Justin, their parents (known as Grandma and Grandpa because of the presence of a baby in the house), and my sister’s 1.5 year old son called Kenneth (or Ken Ken for short). He is so cute! He can even call me “auntie,” which made me melt.
It was a short but sweet break. I helped out around the house by babysitting, decorating the Christmas tree, running short errands for last minute cheese and heavy cream. I baked blueberry muffins because this family has a fondness for blueberry muffins and I made chocolate chip cookies to bring back for my friends. We had no turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but we made Justin’s homemade lasagna recipe with fresh pasta from scratch and everything. Jeremy finally got an ice cream maker and stand mixer – it had been on his wishlist for forever. We decided to make my sister’s favorite black sesame ice cream. We ended up in a funny situation where Jeremy, Justin, and I – a college student and two adults in their 30s with successful careers – huddled around the ice cream maker and stared at it for 30 minutes, watching it churn the ice cream batter without moving an inch. We were like three children fascinated by an aquarium, staring at it go around and around in pure awe.
After putting Ken Ken to bed, Justin and I would hang out in the kitchen, listening to his YouTube playlist of live music and chat about everything from his workplace culture to my life plans. Despite him being a lot more senior than me, we seem to get along fairly well. Jeremy and Justin are like older brothers to me, and Grandma and Grandpa are like real grandparents to me too. They care so much for me, it makes me feel warm inside. When my stomach wasn’t feeling too well, Grandpa made me pi dan zhou 皮蛋粥 (century egg porridge). Justin’s girlfriend Gigi would always give me big hugs and she promised that we would go out to do our nails together come Christmas. My sister keeps trying to convince me to take computer science classes (which I will someday!), and though it feels like pressure, I know she’s just trying to watch out for me.
Seeing my sister and her family every once in a while makes me really happy. It makes me feel a bit less out of place in the states and makes living here for a long time feel like a reality that I’m okay with accepting. I don’t know if I can call the United States home yet, but I think I’m getting there. I can’t wait to go back and see them again when Christmas comes. 🙂