Monday evening out

Larry went to LeTourneau University from '98-'00 to finish his bachelor's degree.  Every quarter, he gets their alumni newsletter/magazine thing.  A couple of months ago, he read an article that he enjoyed, so he emailed the author (the president of the university) to tell him that he liked it.  And that was that.

About 3 weeks ago, the president wrote back & thanked him for his complimentary email.  As a thank you, he asked us to be his guests at an event that the school hosted last night.  We were excited because this event was a dinner with the president and a ballet by the St. Petersburg Ballet--Romeo & Juliet.  Since we've never been to a ballet, this sounded like such a treat!

Now mind you, it was indeed a great honor to be invited by the university president and to be able to sit with he & his wife through the program.  And a free (gourmet) meal was awesome!  Wow...all I needed was flowers to make it the "perfect" date, right?

<snicker>

How many of you have ever eaten a gourmet meal?  It was a very "pretty" meal.  Can you say "hoity-toity"?  We had a salad (a couple sprigs of parsley topped with a vinagrette dressing) and a small toasty baguette bread with brie on top.  We had some pea soup for the second course.  The main course was a very crunchy-breaded chicken breast with penne pasta & spaghetti sauce.  Dessert was caramel apple cheesecake.  Everything was very fancy shmancy complete with the silverware & china setting.  We left feeling like we'd hob-nobbed with the bigwigs.  Dinner conversation was pleasant, but man....I just felt like a big dumby, so I just nodded, added a polite "uh-huh" now and then and tried to eat as daintily as I could.  Larry reminded me of Patrick's advice (on Spongebob)--- PINKY OUT!  LOL

The ballet was very cool to watch.  The talent of these dancers is just phenomenal.  The program listed birth years for most of the dancers.  I think the oldest one was born in '79.  The rest were born in the mid-80's.  I believe they said that only 1 of the dancers spoke English, so she was the translator for everyone else.  Good thing since the ballet was entirely instrumental.  It's been about a hundred years since I read Romeo & Juliet, so some of the ballet was hard to follow, but I did catch the high points & big moments.  Aside from the tall man who sat in front of me, it was a really neat experience!

All in all, we had a really nice evening out.  It was a special treat that we may or may not ever get to do again, so I'm glad we were given the oppurtunity to go.  And the funny thing is....it turns out that the university president who invited us lives about 5 miles away here in our little hometown.  Small world!