Please invite your international friend over for Thanksgiving because it would mean the world to them. While getting three days off of classes is nice, the third week of November usually is a time of loneliness and missing home for international students. When home is 9,000 miles away, going home for less than a week is out of the picture. Even worse, seeing all your friends go home and spend Thanksgiving with their families and being left in a ghosted campus is a step further into kicking you when you're already down.

When your family is so far away, your friends become your family and Thanksgiving become Friendsgiving. Friendsgiving can work on so many levels, and that's only a part of its beauty.

Last year, my Burmese friends who are scattered out all over the United States made a plan to come together in Los Angeles, rent out an AirBnB, make Burmese food, listen to Burmese songs, and go around and say what we're thankful for. We reminisced about home and appreciate the sharing of gratitude that Thanksgiving entailed – something that isn't present in our own culture. It was a lovely time to touch base with home before tackling college, finals, and stress again.

This year, I am having my first all-American Thanksgiving ever. I've bragged about it to everyone I know back home, and they're hyped for me. I got a lot of Oh my god, you're gonna have an American Thanksgiving?! Like in the movies?!

Thanks to the best friends ever, I have been lucky enough to not have to spend my holidays alone. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends who have made a strange city a second home, embrace me into their own families, and feed this Burmese girl a full-out Thanksgiving meal with turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, complete with apple pie.