Things worth bragging about

This was a great week for the Hewitt/Anderson family.

On Wednesday, Darby passed his preliminary exam. This was a major step towards his Ph.D., and I'm so proud of all the work he put in. There's no rest for the weary, though, as he has to prepare for a conference he's leaving for in a week.

Mom and Dad came into town on Tuesday night. Dad had a conference in Chicago, and Mom came along to hang out with Darby and me. This morning, we all got up early to cheer on Dad as he ran the Illinois marathon. This was his fourth marathon, and he did awesome. It was a lot of fun cheering him on. Running a marathon is definitely a big accomplishment, but we all had to laugh when Dad told us about a woman who yelled at the runners, "You're all heroes!" That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but we're all very proud of him. :)

Me gusta chocolate

I'm taking a Spanish conversation class this semester. The theme for this week's chapter is "Coffee and Chocolate." Awesome, right? Anyway, the class is almost all girls and the discussion about chocolate today was one of the most lively we've had all semester. Here's about how it went (translated into English, of course):

Teacher: What's your favorite way to eat chocolate?
Student 1: I like chocolate ice cream.
All other students: Oooh. yum.
Student 2: I like 100 Grand Bars.
All other students: Oh yeah, those are good.
Student 3: I like chocolate fondue.
All other students: Ohhh, fondue.
Teacher: One time I ate a dozen chocolate-covered strawberries all by myself.
All students: Wow. Yeah, chocolate-covered strawberries are sooooo good.
Student 4: My favorite chocolate is Lindt.
All other students: Mmmm-hmm. Yes.
Student 5: Dove is also really good.
All other students: Oh yeah!

And that went on for about 15 minutes. I was dying laughing. It didn't matter what anyone said. Everyone would say oohh and nod their heads vigorously. Normally, the teacher has to pry answers out of people, but we probably would have gone on talking about chocolate for the whole hour. It seems that talking about chocolate is almost as good as actually eating it...almost. The lone guy in our class just didn't get it.

Party Like It's 1999

On Friday, we went to Mica's "millennium" themed Tex-Mex birthday party. Guests were encouraged to dress like they did in the 90s. I decided to go all out and curl my bangs (although I didn't have bangs in the 90s) and pull my hair back with a claw clip. Darby was not a fan of my hairstyle. The first thing he said when I showed him was "I'm so glad it's not the 90s anymore." I also wore my late-90s/early-2000s uniform---a long-sleeved shirt under a short-sleeved shirt.

We watched 90s music videos, hula hooped, played with an etch-a-sketch, and watched 10 Things I Hate About You, which was my favorite movie in high school. I don't remember how many times I watched it with my girlfriends. I could still quote practically the whole movie.

Since I forgot my camera (as always), I stole these pictures from Mica's facebook.

Darby wasn't so sure about Harrison's hairstyle.

Jin, me, and Cassandra doing the macarena. Man, that song is long. And there's really not much to the dance.

The only 90s hand sign we could come up with was bunny ears.

Jin was awesome at the hula hoop. She barely put forth any effort.

It was such a fun party. I love spending time with my MATESL friends anyway, but the awesome theme and yummy food were the icing on the cake (pun intended).

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend. We don't get any days off school for Easter, but we enjoyed a lovely weekend nonetheless. On Saturday, a package arrived from the Easter Bunny: Darby and I each got a book from our Amazon wish list and 2 Reese's eggs (yum!). I love that our parents still send us holiday treats. It's so fun to get those unexpected packages.

After church this morning, we went over to our friends' house for a delicious Easter lunch of pork loin, sweet potatoes, roasted asparagus and sweet potatoes, and strawberry pie. I was so happy when they invited us. Last year, I had a lot of fun throwing an Easter brunch, but I just didn't make it a priority this year. I was kind of sad that we might not do anything special to celebrate.

Easter weekend always brings back memories of LTC (Leadership Training for Christ), which was a conference our church always went to over Easter weekend. Kids could participate in different events like chorus, puppets, drama, art, etc., and earn medals. Being the huge nerd that I was and still am, I always participated in a bunch of events. I went through my old photo albums tonight to find some pictures from LTC.

The conference was always held at really fancy hotels, so in our down time, we would go exploring. Jessica, Hannah, and I found these creepy kid statues and thought it would be cool to mimic their poses. Dorks.

Our puppet team and our famous vegetable puppets. I was always one of the three snow peas. This was our senior year, and some of our team members had graduated, so either Whitney or I had to be two peas' voices, so Stephanie could play the corn (named Corn E. Cob). Thinking back on my puppeteering days cracks me up, because it's so random. Are puppets only a big deal in the church of Christ? Or do other denominations have them, too? They're kind of creepy when you really think about it, but we always had so much fun planning and performing our skits.

Our Bible Bowl team. Bible Bowl was my favorite event. You studied one book of the Bible for several months; my dad was usually the coach, and he always came up with fun games to help us prepare. Then, all of the teams gathered in a huge ballroom and answered questions about the book. The atmosphere in that room was so tense; it's hilarious now to think how worked up I got about it. Your team sat in a line, so you couldn't see each other, and everyone displayed cubes with their answers on it. Then, they would announce the correct answer, and your scorer would hold up the number of people on your team who had gotten it right. When the number was less than 4, I was always thinking, "Who missed that one? That was easy!" I was perhaps a teensy bit high strung. But overall, it was such a fun experience, and most of my Bible knowledge is from those years. In December, I was a scorer for a small Bible Bowl competition at our church here, and it brought back so many good memories.