This weeks date..

Last Thursday Betty swore was the night of this ward party.. I thought it was something different, but we got dressed up and showed up to the church to find just a bunch of men doing 'secretive preparations' for the following night. No big deal at all because we were in a hurry to get to the baptism of my old roommate John. It was a really cool experience. Pretty weird to have a baptismal font in one of my old classrooms on campus.
So the following night, Friday, Betty and I showed up to the church trying to be fashionably late by 25 minutes, but just found ourselves basically alone waiting another 40 minutes for the thing to actually start. We ended up having a BLAST!
Things can be a tad awkward since I don't speak Spanish very well. I can understand when they talk about church stuff or very slowly. So trying to keep up I had to have Betty translate a bit for me. The guy in charge really thought this was going to be such a surprise for the women, even though Betty had guessed everything before it happened.
They hired a DJ first off, with a sweet set up on stage, flashing stop light, disco lights, he had those sweet clear sunglasses (the should have shaded lenses, but they're just clear). They also had a photographer with a beautiful backdrop for a photo shoot (excellent pose will be shown when printed) and he also did film. So it started with us walking through this archway that was lit up by Christmas lights as the guy filmed us... no one knew what for.. we all just had to do something stupid, so I picked up Betty, carried her through and everyone loved it.
Then the men served food to the women that all the men had prepared... pretty nasty rice, chicken, a KFC bucket, Halloween cookies and Betty's and my favorite, someone brought sunflower seeds. Still in the shell and just sitting in the middle of the table. haha... it was so funny. A potluck, and someone brings sunflower seeds!
After that we went in to the bishops office and got what we had prepared the night before, beautiful wrapping paper held a rose for each lady, tied up with ribbon and some incredible personalized cards.
Then we played this game where everyone had to pop a balloon on a chair... Betty and I could not stop laughing, all these crazy latino's in their 50-60's waddling around the cultural hall trying to pop balloons.. probably a had to be there moment.
Finally, things got really crazy... the music began and the dance floor filled, the chairs emptied and dancing commenced. That's something I love about the culture, they will dance the entire night, but Americans will take about 45 minutes before anyone dances, get weirded out that people are watching, and then sit down and the party ends. The second the music started the floor was full and no one stopped for about an hour, then it was on and off.
All in all, we had such a good time. The activity was pretty cheesy, but we couldn't stop talking about how fun it was. Everyone there was so welcoming and warm. They made us really comfortable and we left asking ourselves if we should just transfer ourselves to that ward?
The bishop and his wife were the best dancers, getting really latino'ly sexy, some crazy lady was eating Betty up dancing with her, etc. We will be at the next ward party.. no question about it.


This is what I'm going to look like after some salsa classes.

I apologize that no pictures are up of anything real yet.. I have to improvise with google search... but I'm going to do one big blog of all of the pictures I've promised to put up..
I'll get on that this week. Betty will be gone= I'll be bored= I will get it done.