Here . . . you have to throw your own party

This week we had a house full of people. They all came because Brenda and I spent the whole day preparing this elaborate meal for them all. It was an amazing amount of work. We made trip after trip to the store (on foot). We carried bag after bag of food back from the market. I spent an hour at the butcher getting my pork chops cut just so, and tenderized. I had been collecting the ingredients for my marinade for days. I laid out all the chops and salted them and placed them in the marinade. Here is the photo!

Brenda made homemade rolls (thank you God for Breadmakers!). We had so much food it was even spread out over the living room. Here is that photo!


She made desert. We chopped strawberries and vegetables. We had to keep washing cutting boards. I bought every drink known to man (other than rajkija - see previous post). I made a different marinade for the chicken. I washed dishes, Brenda washed dishes, I cleaned the grill, cleaned out the old ashes, got it all ready to cook 36 pieces of meat on a small grill. We baked potatoes, and then we baked them again (twice baked), we baked cakes, we baked rolls. We fired up the grill and we grilled and grilled and grilled.

And the people came (late of course) and the house filled up and people filled their plates and ate and ate and ate. We hung out and talked for hours and hours. We then let them all leave and we started the massive clean up. In fact we ran out of steam completely and finished the clean up this morning with a couple of more hours of work.

This is how you celebrate any important event here in this part of the world. People don't do this for you. They don't throw YOU a party, you throw THEM a party. These were our friends. And this was long expected on their part. They came to celebrate my graduation from Gordon-Conwell. It sure is hard work to have so many friends :-).