Many American college students are accustomed to returning home and spending Thanksgiving with family and friends alongside classic holiday dishes, but most international students and staff said they have different holiday experiences.

Ai Saito, a sophomore from Soka-shi, Saitama, Japan, studying photojournalism, said her Thanksgiving break will give her the opportunity to reconnect with her culture. She and her Japanese friends plan to spend their Thanksgiving in Chicago.

“In Chicago, there are Japanese restaurants, Japanese grocery stores,” Saito said. “Basically, we’re going to Chicago for that. We miss our culture.”

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Saito said they make traditional Japanese dishes twice a week but want to spend this break relaxing and enjoying company while having others prepare meals.

Saito said many of her friends have invited her to Thanksgiving dinner, but she’s already planned the Chicago trip. However, she said she will attend the dinner that her ministry, Chi Alpha, is holding Saturday. She said the dinner is geared toward international students as an alternative for those without holiday plans.

Narayanan Iyer, an assistant professor of journalism, said he has made a tradition out of celebrating Thanksgiving with a co-worker, who he also considers a friend.

“It’s something we’ve come to look forward to,” Iyer said. “Left by ourselves, Thanksgiving doesn’t mean much because were aren’t native to this culture, so we really don’t know what the thanks is all about.”

Iyer said since his time at graduate school, families have always been welcoming and opened their homes during the holiday. While Iyer was a student at Indiana University, he said he received an email from the internwational students office informing him of a host family who would contact him and introduce him to their Thanksgiving day traditions.

He said the opportunity exposed him to an aspect of American culture he wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

“It was a wonderful experience because this was the first time I got to see Americans as a part of a larger family,” Iyer said. “Usually when you meet people, it’s always a very individualist setting. You rarely see people with their uncles and aunts and a larger family gathering.”

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Linda Brayfield, Thanksgiving coordinator for the Newman Catholic Student Center, said the center’s Thursday dinner is all-inclusive and many international students attend the event. In its 43rd year, Bayfield said the dinner provides a Thanksgiving celebration for campus and community members.

Iyer said although he doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving without an American host, he is considering doing so for his daughter. He said they would approach Thanksgiving and other American holidays a bit differently because his wife is vegetarian and the two have raised their daughter the same.

“It might not be turkey, but just so (my daughter) doesn’t feel left out when everyone else is celebrating and she has nothing to look forward to,” he said. “It will be part of the process of mixing and matching cultures.”

He said he and his wife are Hindu, so they don’t celebrate Christmas. He said they may expose their daughter to the holiday traditions because his daughter’s peers celebrate it.

“My wife and (I) were thinking we might have to start these traditions, like buying a Christmas tree,” Iyer said.