With Thanksgiving just around the corner indicating the approach of the holiday season, I’m starting to feel a tinge of homesickness as I won’t be heading back to New Jersey until the middle of December. Although I love everyday here at USC, from classes to food to of course the weather, it’s occasionally hard to not be able to see or talk to family and friends back home for an extended period of time. It’s a completely normal feeling though and I’ve found there are many fun ways to alleviate it: many of which I did just this past week!
I’ve found that I’m definitely not the only person from the east coast who feels a tinge of longing for the changing of the leaves and the first snow. So I met up with one of my closest friends, Ian, whose from New York City, to just hang out and talk about our plans for a Thanksgiving home away from home. It was nice to reminisce about visiting the Museum of Modern Art, ice skating in Bryant Park or just standing in front of the holiday window displays–activities we grew up with back in the East. What’s even more helpful though is that then we started talking about similar activities we did here like visiting the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, getting to hit the beach etc. We found that while we love and miss places we went to back home, there are equally as fun if not better things to do in Los Angeles that keeps us busy until we do get to go back the northeast.
Holidays on the East Coast
Holidays on the East Coast
I also met up with an old friend, Dan, that I went to middle and part of high school with back in Shanghai. Definitely believing that it’s a small world, I haven’t talked to Dan since the ninth grade, but once discovering that we go to the same University, we picked up as if no time has passed. Again it was nice to think back to what we did when we were in the 8th grade and share stories about what’s happened since. It’s comforting to meet up with someone from when I was younger and see how both of us have grown and what we’ve become interested in like activities on campus and determining our majors and minors.
It’s so easy to have these catch-ups and meetings on campus because of all the cafes and places to go to. I met up with Ian and Dan at RTH cafe and just outside Trojan Grounds. But there are many other places like Literatea, Popovich Cafe and Ground Zero to conveniently meet up in between or after classes. Moreover, there are a lot of campus events, brought to us by Program Board and Visions and Voices, that if the timing’s right, to go to together.
And then there’s always grocery shopping, which I’m about to do with a friend from North Carolina who’s also hanging around here for thanksgiving break too. So while I might not be physically back home, I’ve met plenty of people from around the area who have a lot in common with me!
