The day after Thanksgiving about five years ago, Associate Dean of Admissions Terri Riendeau had finished looking through a batch of Early Decision applications when she walked outside her West College office for a lunch break and ran into a group of international students she had met earlier in the year.
"They were starving," she recalled. "They hadn't eaten in probably 24 hours." Having grown up outside the United States, the students — from Bulgaria, Cyprus and Slovakia — hadn't realized that most stores and restaurants would be closed over the Thanksgiving weekend. Riendeau was happy to fill the void.
"I said, 'Come to my house!' " she recalled — and a Princeton tradition was born.
"It turned into this thing we do every year," Riendeau said.
About 30 University students enjoyed a day-late turkey feast on the Friday after Thanksgiving last year, and 50 came this year, with invitations distributed through an international students mailing list.
Riendeau's partner, Shelley Krause, and their son Dominic said they can't remember a Thanksgiving without a house jam-packed with international students.
"When I tell my parents, they're like, 'In your house?' " Krause said. The house is not enormous, but Krause said she is happy to host the students anyway.
Since around one-third of the students who usually attend are vegetarian, every dish served last Friday was meat-free except the turkey: traditional fare of stuffing, boiled spinach, mashed potatoes and wild rice salad, along with Indian vegetarian fare from Mehek.
Dessert consisted of five varieties of homemade pie.
Though the recipe for pumpkin chiffon "just comes off a box," Riendieu said, "my mom used to make it, so it feels like a family recipe."
Some of this year's attendees had broken bread with Riendieu and Krause before, but others got a taste of their first-ever Thanksgiving dinner.
Minh Nguyen-Dang '09 said Americans living in her home territory of Singapore would celebrate Thanksgiving but with curry and other nontraditional fare to accommodate their non-American guests.
Conversation at the dinner table ranged from visa to roommate problems, with the chatter of board game competition drifting in from the living room.
Riendeau said that she used to hold the dinner for international students the day after Thanksgiving so her family could have its own dinner on Thursday, but now they only celebrate on Friday, to minimize the labor.
On Thanksgiving Day, the dining halls had a Thanksgiving lunch with turkey, sweet potatoes and other traditional food.
Cardet Chisholm of dining services said she didn't mind working on Thanksgiving because the hours are good and "you get to see delight in the student faces knowing someone is there."
That evening students were provided with a box meal, supplemented by some with food cooked themselves.
The Manna Christian fellowship hosted a dinner that night in Spelman.
"If you're not American, it's not your holiday," said Ragnhild Lunnan '09, who is from Norway. "It's just nice to have two days off."
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