International Dinner
An annual tradition at St. John’s of Hyde Park is the International Dinner, in recognition of the diversity of the local population. Foods from all over the world are brought. This year’s dinner had a “Western” theme – with all of the Brits and people from all over the world trying to act and look like cowboys.
Kathi was one of the organizers and spent most of that afternoon helping with preparation of the hall – and was one of the hostesses serving that evening. (The dishes were washed by a couple of young people actually hired for the occasion, so no one in the congregation had to do that. (They’re soooooo civilized here)).
One of the highlights was the “human fruit machine”. “Fruit machine” is British for “slot machine” – you know, most slot machines have fruit on the dials with, for example, three cherries being the jackpot. Our fruit machine was made up of three of the young girls of the church, each wearing a hat festooned with fruit. They each carried a bag with several pieces of fruit (one of each kind). A customer paid 50p (50 pence; half of a pound) and pulled the arm of one of the girls – the three girls than spun around a number of times with each of them reaching into their own bag and extracting – all together – one of the fruits from it. If they all matched, the customer won.
The dinner was held on the weekend when we had twenty wardens from Swedish churches visiting our parish and some of the other church-based charity organizations in the area. Apparently, the Swedish Church does not have a tradition of volunteers doing much of the work of the church, and the purpose was for them to meet with volunteers and office-holders at our church and others to discuss how they might make more use of volunteers.
Other highlights were the apple-bobbing and the music. For some reason, for this Western-theme dinner, rather than a country band (which might have been hard to find here) we had a very good jazz band. And there was a raffle of donated items, with lots of fun prizes (which the Swedes seemed to win in disproportionate numbers)! Visit http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/259632 for pictures of the evening.
Kathi was one of the organizers and spent most of that afternoon helping with preparation of the hall – and was one of the hostesses serving that evening. (The dishes were washed by a couple of young people actually hired for the occasion, so no one in the congregation had to do that. (They’re soooooo civilized here)).
One of the highlights was the “human fruit machine”. “Fruit machine” is British for “slot machine” – you know, most slot machines have fruit on the dials with, for example, three cherries being the jackpot. Our fruit machine was made up of three of the young girls of the church, each wearing a hat festooned with fruit. They each carried a bag with several pieces of fruit (one of each kind). A customer paid 50p (50 pence; half of a pound) and pulled the arm of one of the girls – the three girls than spun around a number of times with each of them reaching into their own bag and extracting – all together – one of the fruits from it. If they all matched, the customer won.
The dinner was held on the weekend when we had twenty wardens from Swedish churches visiting our parish and some of the other church-based charity organizations in the area. Apparently, the Swedish Church does not have a tradition of volunteers doing much of the work of the church, and the purpose was for them to meet with volunteers and office-holders at our church and others to discuss how they might make more use of volunteers.
Other highlights were the apple-bobbing and the music. For some reason, for this Western-theme dinner, rather than a country band (which might have been hard to find here) we had a very good jazz band. And there was a raffle of donated items, with lots of fun prizes (which the Swedes seemed to win in disproportionate numbers)! Visit http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/259632 for pictures of the evening.
posted by Chuck and Kathi Calvano @ 8:18 PM
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