LocalHood’s Annual Thanksgiving Social'21: What are you thankful for this year 🤔🤔?
‘Tis the season of festivities, cheers, giving and thankfullness 🙏😇!!!
On Thursday the 25th of Nov, LocalHood’s celebrated Annual Thanksgiving Social 2021 with our LocalHood volunteers. We woke to a lovely November morning 🌻🌻! Many of our volunteers and partners, met up that evening at Oolaa, Soho.
We realized that while the pandemic has brought with it enough and more heartaches, it has definitely brought us all closer as a community and spread friendship, love, warmth and joy, along with a liberal dash of laughter and fun!
So we went around asking a few of our motley group of volunteers how the past year had treated them, what they were thankful for at their point in their lives and what were they looking forward to. Their responses made us laugh, weep with frustration and feel happy and excited with anticipation, all at the same time.
Pooja had an eventful 2021, with two overseas trips. In pure Pooja fashion, she embraced travel and quarantine in the covid age with open arms and was thankful for this opportunity to travel as a family. She has plans to go on another trip abroad to meet her family. If that doesn’t happen, this would be the first time Pooja and her family stay in Hong Kong for X-mas and the New Year. She is looking forward to making new happy Hong Kong memories.
While Pavitra thought 2021 was boring, owing to an overkill of hikes and exploring HK sojourns in 2020, Fiona felt it was tiring, albeit rewarding watching her little one grow. Both ladies, like most others, were thankful for the continued good health of near and dear ones. Fiona hopes to catch up on sleep in the coming year, while Pavitra wants to get back to hiking and exploring the city. She hopes to travel back home to India soon too.
Our dear Alex, thought that 2021 was far more interesting than 2020: exciting, scary, challenging and hopeful. He, like many others is glad to have escaped the clutches of the pandemic. He hopes to continue building stronger relationships and build his career and personal life.
Chris found the past year to be a “big breakout” and is thankful for the abundance of opportunities that have come her way this year. She hopes that the coming year brings stability and good health.
Shobhana’s year, on the other hand, was mixed at its best. She’s found stability and friendship in a new place, amidst some personal setbacks. She’s thankful that she and her family have been safe from the pandemic, and that she’s managed to get the vaccination shots for herself and her family without any fuss, unlike in other parts of the world. She hopes to be able to visit her family at least in 2022, having not seen them since 2019.
Anna had an awesome year, she managed to finally see her friends and family in Europe. But most excitingly, they’ve finally been accepted as an adoptive family, a culmination of many months of paperwork and legalese. She’s thankful this year for her beautiful family and friends and the support that she gets from them always, even in absentia. She just hopes that the adoption process works out as expected and they can have an exciting new addition to their family!
Winnie has had a very interesting year where she’s experiencing what it is like to be a single parent to a curious second grader, without actually being single while her husband has gone on a secondment to London.
She’s grateful to the support received from friends, family and her helper. While this time has proved that she can don multiple hats, at home and work and helped her son gain more independence, she’s more appreciative than ever of single working moms.
She’s looking forward to a London trip to visit her husband in the coming year and take the next step in her career with the Global Trade Certificate exams.
For many out there 2021 has been a challenging year- having to deal with departure of friends, staying away from distant family, job loss, quarantine and the general confusion. In this myriad of bad news it could be hard to see the small little good things that happened too. Let's start with Donald Trump loosing the elections, the Corona virus vaccine 😅😅or simple pleasures accessible once again this year like going out to dinner with friends 😋😋.
HAPPY FESTIVE SEASON PEEPS 🎉🥳🎊!!