Thursday, May 25, 2006

Thanksgiving 1999


thanksgiving
Originally uploaded by Noisypond.

So going back through my photos for that picture of Abi and me in the previous post got me feeling a little sentimental (unusual for me), so I thought I'd share some other great pics that you may not have seen.

This photo, for example, was taken at my "apartment" in Texas 1999 (when I was on the VB course with Abi). It was the American Thanksgiving. Most of my classmates were European, but there were a few Americans with us as well who really struggled with being away from their families over this holiday. The course was pretty intense, and there were lots of little cliques among the class. I decided to invite the whole class to my apartment for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner, and, surprisingly, most people showed up. Even more astonishingly, we all had a fantastic time, and we really gelled as a group that day. To be sure, there were spats and conflicts, but weeks later, our instructors said that they had never seen a class that worked so well together.

I don't know what it is, but I think I have the gift of pulling people together. I don't consider this bragging, as I have no idea how I do it. Nor does it happen all the time. But when it happens, it's pretty cool, and seems much larger than just me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Cindy,
You do have that gift! I fondly recall that from our living together in the "big yellow monstrosity"! Remember all the gatherings of people in our living room - keeping the french doors closed to reserve the heat in winter, Ruth breaking the leg off the davenport so that we took off the rest of the legs and it sat on the floor the remainder of the year? Fondues? (Okay, so that really started with Mike Kelly, but we can claim it too). Good times...
Thanks for the memories,
Faye

Eclecta said...

Hey Faye,

Thanks for dropping by! Yes, we had so many fun times that year that we lived together! The best, though, will always be the egg sliding off our makeshift counter onto the carpeted stairway below - no matter how hard we tried to stop it! Oh, I get tears in my eyes every time I think about it, I laugh so hard!

:->

C.