Party Week

I can't believe it's been two months again since I last wrote. I meant for this to be a more regular activity but I don't think I'll manage. Life has been busy... But - here is a story of Party Week which was the week ending July/starting August and it's been sitting as a draft on my Blogger dashboard ever since because I'd forgotten to post it!

Party Week was amazing for us, on a social scale: we had three unusual parties to go to. What I remember most of them is FOOD, FOOD and more FOOD. I think the English are a nation of Foodies! But of course we had lots of fun as well, and it was great seeing some old friends, making some new ones and getting to know some a bit better. Let me tell you more about it.

Fist we had our International Day party at church. Sadly, it was quite a small meeting - maybe a lot of people were already away on their holidays... We were all supposed to dress up with at least one item of foreign dress we might have bought on a holiday if not the real thing, and bring some foreign food for a bring and share buffet. Sean wore his Hawaii shirt and because I had been asked for an interview on Germany, I chose to wear my Dirndl (German folk custome) and bring some German potato salad and frankfurters. Most of the international members of our congregation were there (probably because they had been asked for interviews as well) and so we heard some stories from Norway, Germany, Ghana, South Africa, the Gambia, Zimbabwe and China. The buffet was an ecclectic mix but yummy as always, and we had great fun together.

Next we went to the wedding of some old friends we know from the canoeing club. It had been a real surprise when they told us they were getting married as they had already been together for some 20 years... We went to the reception which took place in an infant school, beautifully decorated with an enormous amount of fairy lights. Everybody had to line up to welcome and parade the bride and groom who came in a huge landrover with canoes and paddles on the roof and ribbons for decoration. Wendy wore a beautiful turquoise silk dress and Andy had cleaned up nicely, too. There was an all vegetarian buffet, nibbles buffet and dessert buffet with 12 different elaborate gateaux, and later a barn dance on a decking stage outside. Shame that there didn't seem to be anybody with much experience of barn dancing or anything similar, and the band while making nice music in the breaks was neither very good at teaching nor inspiring in getting people up -- not to mention lots of small kids trying to dance. It was rather chaotic, so most of the time we didn't even bother and kept talking to some more old canoeing friends whom we hadn't seen for ages - and of course all the while, going back for some more nibbles or another piece of gateaux. By the time we left, I would have sworn I'd never eat another thing!

But of course the day after we were invited for a BBQ with the Old Windsor bellringers... The weather had turned and it was raining more or less all day so this turned into a truly English event by which everybody huddled under the two gazebos and the BBQ under some big umbrellas. It didn't stop us having fun, though, or lots to eat: Daniel, the tower captain, made it his aim to ensure that there would be nothing left in the fridge and kept putting food on the BBQ long after we were all full and declining, and of course food shouldn't be thrown away, so he kept simply putting it on everybody's plate. I hadn't eaten that much in a long time! Most of us kept sitting long after the BBQ had gone out, until it finally got too chilly to sit outside. It was a really nice opportunity to get to know the Old Windsor ringing band a bit better.