As we are near the end of November, it is difficult to overlook the idea that in Italy people do not observe Thanksgiving Day, at least not in the same way Americans do. Granted that many countries around the world commemorate Thanksgiving, and each one of them may celebrate it for different reasons. American Thanksgiving is highly contextualized in the idea of family gatherings, turkey, and a cold November weather. It is in fact one of the biggest holidays in the US, along with Christmas. To my surprise however, I ran into a holiday that is strikingly similar to the American celebration: San Martino’s day.

It has been a wild year. At the beginning of the year, I was serving in the United States Peace Corps in an Albanian village bordering Greece. I was training other volunteers, working on tourism projects, and marking hiking trails to increase tourism in the area. As the entire world knows, COVID-19 had different plans for all of us. We were evacuated on March 15th back to the States, along with over 7000 Peace Corps volunteers worldwide. I was not ready to be back in the States in general, and much less so in a COVID world.