Smells of spicy foods and loud chatter in Arabic, Thanksgiving at freshman Taqwa Naas’s house was anything but typical.

“My family is from Libya and I speak Arabic at home, especially with my mom,” she said. “My mom won’t acknowledge me if I don’t speak to her in Arabic.”

During Thanksgiving break relatives visited Naas and her family.

“We ate some ethnic dishes from Libya for Thanksgiving, not like the normal foods like turkey or sweet potato,” Naas said. “One thing we ate was this soup called Bazeen, it’s like a tomato soup, but it’s heavier and it has dough, potatoes and boiled egg whites.”

According to Nass, speaking another language has it’s perks, but isn’t always easy.

“Every time I speak Arabic I might mix up English words with Arabic, so my dialect isn’t as good as others,” Naas said.

Freshman Jasmine Narakorn is also bilingual.

“My family speaks Thai at home,” Narakorn said. “I picked up the language by being around it, so I don’t always speak it correctly, or grammatically.”

Narakorn’s Thanksgiving is more traditional than Naas’s.

“We actually have regular Thanksgiving, it’s like the one American meal we have,” Narakorn said. “Normally we just eat Thai, basically anything with rice and beef.”

Narakorn had relatives visit for Thanksgiving.

“This year only my relatives who live in Florida came to our house for Thanksgiving,” Narakorn said. “We spoke a mix of Thai and English.”

Narakorn also had a few humorous stories about speaking in Thai.

“I’ll use Thai to talk to my cousin in public if we want to talk about something, or someone,” Narakorn said. “But she’ll reply in English which totally ruins the point.”

By Haley Alvarez-Lauto