Indiana 1-Becca's wedding

So, I've recently gotten to spend the last three days with one of my dearest friends, Miss Becca Cross. I flew out of Bozeman on Wednesday, hoping to be in Indy and at her house by 8 so we could have a pseudo-bachelorette party. However, the weather had other plans. Tornadoes, in fact, in Denver. I was there an extra two and a half hours. I got in around midnight. It was not good. I was a little hampered by the fact that I'm used to western towns where the designers started laying things out in grids and Becca and Matt live in an old part of Indiana. The roads all have similar names and they're all twisty and curvy. Blergh. At least I got a rental car with a sunroof and got to rock down the freeway. Love being back in the Midwest. My skin... instantly plumper. I LURV it.
Thursday, Becca and I stopped at her parents house to pick up the flowers for her wedding. Unfortunately, three of them had started drooping. So we went to Fresh Foods, which I have never been to before so that was pretty exciting. Then we drove down to her family's farm. It is so beautiful down there. All green and purty.
Friday, we started running around picking things up for the wedding. I got to hang around with the Skelton side of the family and they were so warm and welcoming, it was just fun to be there. Pizza and Zombie Nerf guns rounded out the evening.
Saturday was a little hot for the wedding, but it ended up being so... beautiful. The tent was set up in a field behind the house and the ceremony was held underneath a natural bower of trees. A little warm, but with a short ceremony, was totally doable. The food from the Schnitzelbank it was just a wonderful evening. I am so happy I got to go and am so sincerely happy for Matt and Becca. Yay!

Gardiner weekend

All of last week was uber-busy. It was our last Arts Council performance and I was the lead. This was the performance that was supposed to happen in February but was cancelled due to snow. Another little spar thrown in the works was that we had promised to provide dinner, but the woman who usually does that for us was called out of town. So, I pulled Emily and Allie into the mix. Thank goodness they were willing to help because I had NO clue how to make chili.
Between kickboxing, rugby, Parks-to-Paradise race meeting and everything else that was going on, I was pretty much not getting home 'til 8 or 9 and trying to get everything fixed up on all of my breaks and lunch. Saturday morning was the start to a nice relaxing day.
Our performers were supposed to show up at 6 with the show starting at 7. Well, one of them showed up at 6:55. Thank goodness Gardiner is so relaxed. I myself am not usually relaxed. In fact, I almost started freaking out because I wasn't panicking. But really, the worst thing that might happen would be that we'd sell off the dinner and have to refund some season tickets. No biggie. Especially since I'd get my post-show cocktail that much faster.
Then, Saturday, Josh came down to look for jobs and we got to spend some time together. Good weekend.

Guatemala-Thursday

Well, we started off the day at the country house but there was nothing much to do so we all tripped on over to the city house. Where we poured concrete. Yep. It was concrete. Again.
We had lunch and then went to get the wood for the benches. Once again, the kids loved seeing me and I got hugs and high-fives all around. It was freaking awesome. The benches were cheaper to build so Todd fixed up a plan and we went to work. Well, they only let me do a little because, though I dearly love me some power tools, I'm not incredibly proficient.
That night was Miriam's birthday. Miriam was the owner, with her husband Gilberto, of the hotel where we were staying, Marelyn's mother. So Marelyn made a cake, some of Miriam's friends and family came and the family got a DJ. Yes, across the street in the hotel's garage, there was a DJ. It was the thirteen of us dancing our hearts out for the second night in a row. It was fun and exhausting and I was so glad there was only one more day of work because I was just tired of having so much fun.

Guatemala-Wednesday

Wednesday, hump day. I was looking forward to being halfway done. In the morning, I helped do more concrete in the country house. We finished up in time for lunch. After that was more ESL with the pastor and his wife. I also helped bring wood from the top tier (the pastor's house) into one of the school classrooms. So there were these great long boards that I was carrying one end of. When we walked onto the school grounds, all of the kids started yelling "Jessica, Jessica." I felt like a rock star. After putting the boards down, we noticed that one of the things the kids were learning was English. One of their sentences was "My name is Linda."
Well.
One of the women in our group said, "My name is Linda!" And the kids looked at her wonderingly and then very obediently parroted, "My name is Linda." It was so... darn... cute!
That night was pretty fun as we all went to Zacapa and danced the night away with another CALMS group from Indy. Okay, our group danced and the other group kind of sat. The band was awesome especially since it was Jovanni (Yo-van-nee)'s marimba band. Very, very fun.
Only depressing part of the day came from the dentist's group. They had to pull out the permanent molars of an eight-year-old. Just eight years old and her teeth were that bad. Blergh.

Dude

Dude, I'm, like, totally loving this video. There're some definite language issues but this is totally representative of discussions I've had while drunk and talking about eighties cartoons.

An exciting weekend

I hope to finish up my exploits in Guatemala soon but I'll throw in a little about my weekend. Friday night was a blast, watching the Gardiner school kids put on a play with the Missoula Children's Theater. This group sends pairs of people all over the states and seventeen countries to work with kids everywhere. Monday, they hold auditions and then practice the rest of the week with the play on Friday. This year's play was a riff off of Robinson Crusoe and was funny, touching and so... damn... cute. Especially the little K-1 chameleons.

Saturday, Heidi and I went up to Livingston to participate in the Trout Unlimited River Cleanup. We ended up getting assigned to the Carbella put out, about 10 miles from Gardiner. A lot of time in the car that day. But we cleaned up quite a bit of trash. My best was a pair of waders. Heidi found a stash of dirty magazines. But we did a good thing, got to enjoy the beautiful weather, got a free lunch, and I won a shirt in the raffle. Woo hoo!

I got back into town with time to spare for a shower and change before the annual Gardiner chapter of the Ducks Unlimited Banquet. For the past five years I've been a Duck Girl. I run around selling raffle tickets and then helping carry items for the live auction. Actually, this year I helped run tickets for buyers to sign. What the hey, it's an hour of open bar, free dinner, and time spent with people I don't normally get to see. It's also one of the very few nights of the year that I'll go out to the bar and stay later than 10 o'clock.

Sunday, I again joined Heidi, but this time also Mariah, Leigh Ann and Trudy to head up to Bozeman for the last Symphony performance of the year. The soloist was okay but the second half was the music from Stanislaki's Petrouchka. The director stopped after each act to explain what would have been going on if this had been the ballet. It was incredible.

We stopped off at the Second Street Bistro in Livingston for dinner. They have the best cocktails in this area. On Sundays, they also have a pizza buffet. Well, they bring pizzas around and offer you pieces of some really great food. Quite a wonderful weekend.

Guatemala-Tuesday

My group started out at the country house mixing cement. But we got done early, so we switched over and helped mix cement at house number two.
Tuesday was supposed to be the hottest day in history for that date so our leader decided that we would take the afternoon off. So, we took two vans and went up to LA Advanzada. It was up in the mountains and therefore much cooler. We looked at the community center that had been built by some other churches then went for a stroll around the village. It was an incredibly poor community that had been devastated in the past year by an earthquake that had killed something like six people out of the 600 that lived there. The houses were made out of cement block or clay bricks. The bricks were the mud/horse manure/hay mixture that you see on National Geographic shows. It was incredible.
The other big story from that day was one of the patients that the doctor treated. It was a thirteen-year-old girl. She had a baby. And was pregnant. Again.

Soccer field. Hate to be the team that has to retrieve a ball from that goal.

Bricks drying in the sun

Community Center

Views on the way up the mountain

Tuesday dinner. The touch of fancy on the left is actually ketchup.