Farewell Dinner & BBQ with Friends

Last Friday the majority of staff at Beth's school gathered for a farewell dinner now that the school year is drawing to a close. While a number of us are staying for another year or more, a large percentage are leaving to pursue careers in other exciting parts of the world. It was great to all be gathered together outside of school.

We had the upstairs to ourselves at the Portal del Angel steak house. This restaurant is perched high up above the city along the highway that leads to El Salvador, providing an expansive view of the sprawling city.

After the tasty dinner and dessert, we enjoyed watching a photo slideshow featuring nearly everyone in attendance enjoying an array of activities Guatemala has to offer. After that, the floor was opened up for some fun--roasting fun. While not a lot of people chose to stand before everyone and roast one of their friends, the few who did provided lots to laugh about. And my clever wife easily got the most laughs with her incredibly funny poem, which roasted everyone in our cohort who came last August. It was so funny, and I was really proud of her comedy skills.

After dinner we decided to take the decor for a ride.

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Saturday morning Beth left with a group of girls to the nearby spa to hang out and celebrate Amy's upcoming baby. She and Matt (our neighbors, by the way) are engaged and will be moving back to Portland at the end of the month. We'll be sad to see them leave as we've really enjoyed being neighbors with them.

I left the city mid-morning along with our friends Jack and Jen to pick up Beth and then head over to Antigua for the afternoon. We had loose plans of doing some shopping and eating, returning before dark. Also joining us for the ride was Campbell and his dog, Tyler. They were meeting up with Campbell's girlfriend, Sarah, at the spa as well and were also planning on heading to Antigua. Once together we started to caravan over to Antigua but were quickly halted by the rain.

Due to the recent tropical storm, we have had near continuous rain since late last week (it's raining right now as I type this). We were only about 10 minutes or so on our way before we reached a point in the road that was flooded over and definitely not worth attempting to pass through. Thankfully we quickly found a spot to double back and abandoned our plans for Antigua.

Our alternate activity for the day ended up being a blast. Jack, Jen, Sarah, Campbell, Beth, and I, along with two others, Chris and Charlotte, met up at Sarah and Campbell's for an afternoon BBQ. We were all enjoying each other's company so much, and we got wrapped up in games of Trivial Pursuit and Catch Phrase, that we didn't leave till some time after 11, nearly seven hours later.

Sarah and Campbell's covered garage was the perfect spot to get out of the rain and still BBQ. (From left: Campbell, Jack, Chris, Sarah, Charlotte)

Charlotte did an excellent job managing the grill and giving the 'What 'choo lookin' at" look.

Time to eat!

Though we don't look very excited here, we were fairly rambunctious throughout the day, especially when the girls rallied back and thought they were going to win Trivial Pursuit (but they didn't!).

Sarah and Tyler snuggled up at the end of the night.