Top Ten of 2010

In my spare time, I've decided to come up with a list of the top ten events of 2010 (thanks for the inspiration, Kevin!). By "Top Ten", I mean the most memorable, not necessarily just the most enjoyable. These may or may not be some of Andrew's top events of the year.

10. Tie between:

a) Surprise Birthday Party at Juan's Flying Burrito: Andrew tells me he made reservations for my birthday, so he takes me by the hand and leads me across the street to Juan's. "Juan's? You made reservations at Juan's? Do they even take reservations?" I was perplexed until we got to the back patio where lots of lovely friends were waiting to eat delicious burritos and scrumptious homemade cake, followed by shenanigans at the Half Moon Bar.

b) Designing an Mouse-Friendly Mouse Trap: When I first saw the mouse out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a cockroach. A day later, I walked in on the mouse sitting on the stove, eating crumbs off of a pan that I had just baked cookies on. Ew! Being that Andrew is much more kind to his fellow living creatures than I can sometimes be, he convinced me that we could catch the mouse somehow (without a mouse trap), and set it free. So we made a trap that consisted of rigging up a "cereal box ramp" on the stove that would go tumbling into the garbage can below if triggered by the little creature crawling on top of it. We got all three mice this way- one of them we caught in the presence of friends and made a group adventure of setting it free.

9. The "Christmas Surprise". It was incredibly fun and entertaining to see the look on our family members' faces when we showed up in Wisconsin and Minnesota for the holidays, unannounced. We spent three weeks hanging with family, giving big hugs and kisses to nieces and nephews, and basically soaking up all the love we could before moving to Honduras for who knows how long.

8. Moving away from New Orleans. Number 8 definitely falls under the category of "Events that affected us a lot, and not necessarily for the better". We miss New Orleans- our friends, the music, the vibe, our neighborhood. I cried when we locked our apartment door behind us. I teared up as we drove away. But we're young, and we wanted to learn a bit of another language and see the world. We can always move back, right?

7. Pub Quiz. For the first half of 2010, we had the lovely opportunity of spending every Monday night in New Orleans drinking beers with our witty and intelligent friends while trying to prove how smart we are (miss you guys so much!). When we left NOLA, there was a gaping hole in our hearts. Luckily, we found a "gringo" pub quiz night in San Pedro, Guatemala, where we kicked some pub quiz butt (although we never claimed first place). And all of that happened before we became champions at the Thursday night pub quiz in Beloit, Wisconsin, due to Andrew's crazy quick math skills.

6. Traveling around Guatemala and Belize with K-Dogg. After being in Guatemala for a couple of months without seeing any familiar faces (except the ones we made familiar while we were there- that's you, Jason!), it was incredibly thrilling to see a confused looking K-Dogg wandering down the street in Rio Dulce, Guatemala. We spent the week snorkeling and gazing into turquoise Caribbean waters, canoeing and hiking through the jungle and Mayan ruins, playing drums with some Garifuna folk, and taking in a lot of pina coladas.

5. Saints' Superbowl win. After we convinced Deb and Colin that it would, indeed, be fun to actually go to a bar and watch the game, it turned out to be even more fun than we had expected. After the Saints won, we secondlined (is that a verb?) through the city, and the energy was outrageous. I'm sure it was unlike anything I'll experience again.

4. Spending a week in Japan with the Witkins family for Nate and Mitsuyo's wedding. Not only was it our honeymoon, but we got to share one hostel room between the five of us for the majority of the trip! (Love you, Witkins family!). Seriously, though, Japan was incredible, especially the part where we watched the sun rise over the clouds from the top of Mt. Fuji. The family karaoke night wasn't bad either.

3. Canoeing the Boundary Waters. After a long, emotional move away from New Orleans, this was the perfect way to relax and feel like I'm getting totally ripped at the same time. Not to mention we got to make jokes with some of our very favorite people for a week, drink beer out of cans, and make hot drinks under a tarp in a hail storm. I vote for this one to be a yearly tradition.

2. Spending a month in the most beautiful spot in the world, Lake Atitlan. With the traditional Mayan dress, the comfort in knowing that toads will never become extinct, $1 cuba libres, and having two awesome local Spanish teachers to interact with all day, this was a perfect way to start off our time abroad.

1. Getting married. Hey, I know it's the obvious one, but come on, it was a freakin' good party. The old dancing with the young. Delicious grub, frisbee playing, kid throwing, gun shooting, African dancing, music making, watching little nieces and nephews reach up to put their cup on top of the bar for more sprite. Also, it lasted for like 4 days. Not to mention that it's a pretty good feeling when most of the people you love are in one room.