Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

While most Yalies will soon head home to their families for Thanksgiving break, many international students — for whom it can be difficult to travel back home during the nine-day recess — have different plans. 

On Thursday, Nov. 23, the University’s Council of Heads of College will host a Thanksgiving buffet at the Omni Hotel from noon to 2 p.m. The event will provide food and community for students staying on campus over the November recess, most of whom are international students. As of Nov. 15, 450 students have registered to attend.

Apart from this event, Yale has not scheduled any official programming for international students during the break. 

“It is undoubtedly a bit isolating having a campus of 6,000 plus undergrads [and] all of them suddenly going down to a couple hundred left scattered across the campus,” Lucas Ogawa ’27, an international student from Hong Kong, told the News.

Some international students plan to travel during the November recess. Ogawa hasn’t finalized his plans for the break, but he hopes to meet up with friends from high school in New York City or Boston. 

Though some of Ogawa’s friends from Connecticut and nearby states invited him to stay with their families for Thanksgiving, he decided not to take them up on their offers.

“Even though it’s their invitation, you still feel like you’re intruding on a personal family occasion, and it’s a bit weird,” he said.

Kamal Mahamud ’27, who is from Nairobi, Kenya, will visit New York for four days with another international student.

Mahamud will stay in New Haven for the rest of the break. On the day of Thanksgiving, he said he plans to share a typical turkey dinner with a friend from Connecticut and her family, rather than attending Yale’s event.

“I’m just excited to experience it for the first time,” Mahamud said. “Expressing gratitude for the year, for your friends, family and blessings that we have. Tasting amazing food [and] cutting the turkey, seeing that in real life.”

Other international students plan to visit family in the U.S. One such student is Alicia Shen ’26 — originally from Hong Kong — who will visit her sister in New York City. 

Shen said that even if she had stayed on campus during the break, she doubts she would have attended Yale’s Thanksgiving lunch.

“I just don’t feel the need to celebrate it because I have no relation to this festival,” she said. “[Thanksgiving break] feels to me just like fall break did.”

Sukriti Ojha ’27, who is from Lucknow, India, will spend the break visiting her uncle and cousins in Danville, California. 

Ojha stayed on campus during fall break, so this will be her first time away from Yale since first-year move-in day, which was on Aug. 20.

“Every place that I go here is to study, to do some kind of work. Even if it’s extracurricular activities, [I’m] always in the mood of, ‘you need to do more work,’ so I don’t think I can relax here anymore,” she told the News. “I need to be someplace else if I really want to unwind.”

Some international students will return to their home countries.

Ben Weiss ’27 will spend the break in his hometown of London, England. In addition to spending time with his family, he plans to travel to other parts of the United Kingdom to visit his friends from high school. 

Weiss chose not to return to England during the October recess, which was five days long, but said the nine-day November recess was “just long enough that it’s worth [him] going back.”

However, none of the other four students the News spoke to considered returning home for the break. They cited expensive plane tickets and lengthy travel time as the main reasons for this decision.

“I don’t live in Delhi where the flight lands, so going back home [takes] two days,” Ojha said. “Out of a week and a half, four days will just be traveling and two days will be jet lag, so we’d be doing nothing.”

Yale’s November recess begins at 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 17.