Passover!

Last night, our team of 80+ people celebrated Passover. I found myself in charge of coordinating this mammoth event, which involved a presentation on the meaning of Passover as well as preparing and serving the food. The group I led had 18 people in it, and we came up with a really fun way to explain the Passover to our ‘audience’ – and everybody loved it! It was really fun.

But it took weeks of preparation to pull this all off! I love managing projects and events and coordinating people, but it’s always so much work. Today, I am dead on my feet after yesterday. Keeping track of people and tasks, making sure tables and chairs were looked after, and even getting adequate lighting since we were going to be outside… there are so many details. Then there was the actual presentation to prepare, and then the huge feast to cook! With the help of a few others, I roasted six legs of lamb, seven chicken breasts, and four very small, whole chickens. (Side note: the chickens come plucked and packaged in the store, but since the Chinese sometimes like to eat the whole thing, the head and legs are still attached!! I had to cut off chicken heads. It was horrifying, to say the least. And they don’t come off with one chop, either. I’ll spare you the photos I took of that gruesome process.)

It was a good ten hours of being on my feet, having my phone ringing endlessly and when it wasn’t ringing, making my own calls to other people to tie up all the ends. But the event was a huge, roaring success! People really enjoyed the presentation (we put Passover into modern day terms, making it like a cooking lesson – and it was really funny, but also very informative … it may sound weird, but it really was brilliant, if I do say so myself!). And the decorations and atmosphere really had a great feel and helped make for an incredible time of fellowship. We had lots of vegetables, potatoes, an egg dish, the meat, matzah, and charoseth to form our Passover feast.

It was a lovely time, and today my body hurts from the long day of running around preparing everything. I hardly sat down yesterday! I’m a bit stiff, but it was worth it. It was a very memorable Passover!

(I am in this photo, serving food - but it's a little dark. I'm towards the bottom right, in grey pants and black shirt)