For me, part of growing up has always meant being away from home for the holidays. Not spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family back home has always seemed like the marker for “adulthood”.

Having spent my first Thanksgiving away from home—far far away from home—I can say that assumption was completely false. I don’t feel like I’ve completed some kind of adult rite-of-passage. In fact, I just feel sad and lonely and disappointed that I wasn’t at home, eating my mom’s gramcracker crusted sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie with cold Cool Whip.

But, misery does love company… and if I had to be in Africa for Thanksgiving, at least I got to spend it with a couple dozen other young Americans. All of whom were just as lonely and just as homesick as I was…