Dinner Party

By midnight last night, I had reached complete exhaustion. But what a glorious day it was...
As usual, I had slept through my 3 alarms for about 40 minutes that morning. Which left me a less than desirable time frame to prepare for the day ahead of me. Around noon, Derek arrived at my apartment with Boyd, Carson and DeWit. We briefly discussed the dinner menu and then we split. Derek went back to his house to clean, and the boys and I went to Meijer to buy the food for dinner. Sunny and 54 degrees, of course we had the music up and windows down :)
As we weaved our way up and down the aisles at Meijer, DeWit and I became side-tracked and completely sucked in by the number of free samples we found around every corner. Clearly a great day to be at Meijer. They even had basketball (arcade style of course). After each playing a round, we shared the good news with Boyd and Carson. Boyd walked away with the high score for the day of 59 points and we all walked away with free coke, stick-on tattoos, and pennants. On our way to check out, we spotted another table of fun. DeWit and I left the food with Boyd at check out and snuck back to the table where we played Wii Bowling and received baseball cards and a giant red balloon to end our epic Meijer adventure.
Windows down again we traveled back towards town to pick up Pat and a mini keg at Grizzly Peak. Here Pat was stuck in the awkward situation of walking down the sidewalk behind a group of obnoxiously slow walkers. His facial expressions, that we observed from the car, after realizing that there was no way around, were a perfect glimpse of what this 22 year old will look like in 40 years.
Upon arrival at Derek's, we discovered that the house was not entirely clean. Chuck joined us to lend a hand and the rest of the afternoon was a scattered combination of cleaning, cooking, organizing, drinking and porching. Before I knew it, the first guest had arrived.
Dinner was a huge success. The 25 guests included 18 of the 21 members of the team, a few potential members, and Dot's family. Chair of the Culture Committee, Dan, began the night with a cultural presentation of Honduras. Dot followed up with a presentation of pictures and experiences on her previous journeys to the very place we will be residing in Honduras. Her father, Mr. Fettis, concluded the presentations with an encouraging and informative speech about his experience in Honduras and the journey that awaits us.
The food was served and the mingling and conversing resumed while a crowd gathered around the big screen showing the final four basketball games. The actual eating of food came to an end after Carson, Chuck, DeWit, Boyd and Anna entertained themselves, and a group of spectators, by eating the pink pickled eggs that somehow made their way into our shopping cart earlier that day (...Boyd and DeWit). Everyone had lost their appetite by this point, except for Carson who not only ate another pink pickled egg, but drank an entire bowl of pink pickled egg juice. YUCK! (photographic evidence of this event exists on someone's camera, whoever it is, please post the picture)
A handful of us took on the post-dinner clean-up, dishes "and such", then retired to the end of the basketball game and a wonderfully in-depth conversation about the project, and future of the project, in Honduras.
My night didn't actually end at midnight, but I WAS completely exhausted. Boyd, Pat, Matt and I ventured down to Relay for Life on Palmer Field to share our left-over goodies with our friends. And by 1am... zzz...

A big thanks to everyone who helped make last night's dinner a big success! 39 days...

-Amelia