But someone really DID want to see our slides

It was Saturday morning of the first full weekend in November. Spouse and I were barely recovering from going over our budget, when I somehow missed a call on my cell phone. The caller, a friend from church, left a message.

“Hi there, just checking in to make sure you’re all set to speak at our meeting Monday evening. Have a great day!”

Wait - what??

We had agreed months ago to talk about our wild and crazy Budapest and India trip from last winter at an upcoming meeting for the women at our parish. The problem was that we were convinced it wasn’t until December. Oops.

After a few minutes of spouting out how we couldn’t possibly put something together that weekend with everything else we planned to do, and how it wasn’t fair that we had such short notice (she told us about this during the summer), I called her back determined to gently let her down.

I failed. She’s good.

Our weekend was spent downloading – or is it uploading – photos from our phones and the cloud. I still don’t really understand where the cloud floats around but it sure had a ton of stuff in it. Then we had to try and remember exactly which monument/bridge/traffic jam was where. While I worked on putting a Power Point presentation together, Spouse looked up some details on several places in case anyone was curious about those little known facts. In the end we had 76 slides, our garb that we wore for the India wedding, and a few other trinkets from our travels.

Too many slides? Did they need to see the slide with the peacock feather vendors in India or the artful presentation of eggs we had in Budapest? Maybe not, but we left them in. Perhaps that’s why people dread seeing personal slide shows – it gets so personal that you can’t relate to “one more slide” of a family vacation. But I will admit it wasn’t so easy to cut back once I started putting it together. Everything was fascinating even a year later.

I flipped through the slides, if you can call it that on a laptop, and Spouse did the majority of the talking. There were a few times that I wished I had stuck in “one more slide” to make a point of a certain area we visited, but based on comments and questions, I think our audience found it interesting and entertaining. I know I did, because it brought me back to where we were just about one year ago and reminded me how we will never regret the time or money spent on this trip.

The first part of our presentation was from our visit to Second Born while she studied in Budapest. Looking through pictures of the Christmas markets in Budapest made me long to go back and experience the festive atmosphere and breathe in the scrumptious scents of mulled wine, bread pizza and pastries. Budapest and neighboring countries know how to do Christmas markets right.

The main part of our slide show was The Love Couple’s India wedding.  Recalling the beautifully arranged rooftop ceremony surrounded by The Groom’s family and friends brought a smile to my face at the thought of how they welcomed us into the fold. There were also other amazing memories such as the magnificent vision of the Taj Mahal. It was a world we never expected to see and will always recall with a touch of wonder.

It was fun to reminisce for a night and not see too many yawning, glazed expressions. I can sympathize with someone being forced sit through a slide show, but hey, at least this one time we were invited.