Mix Tape: Gone, Gone, Gone

Music is such a big part of my life and my writing. “And the Jukebox Plays” is a fun little label to highlight some of the music that moves me, that inspires me – emotionally or physically. I hope you find some music that does the same for you.

(Gone, Gone, Gone by Philip Phillips. I already was obsessed with his other song

“Home” and now I have another obsession.)

There are so many good moments that come with living abroad.

One of my favorite days of our lives in Dominican Republic is C4 (Corpus Christy Colmado Crawl). We were introduced to C4 last year by Jennifer Norman (J.No), a brilliantly tech savvy beautiful creature that had been putting on this event for the teachers of CMS for the past 5 years. She is our fearless leader throughout the C4 season.

* * * * *

Details of the Event:

Put together a team of 8-12 people complete with team name and team costumes. (This year we chose the double entendre team name of Los Presidentes which is the national beer here – that we spray painted onto our shirts and we printed and pasted U.S. President faces on cardboard to create masks – gosh we’re clever.)
Arrive at C4 location at 3:45 for your list of phrases
Walk around the Colonial Zone with your team (with Presidente beers purchased from your nearest colmado, hence the name Colmado Crawl) shooting pictures that might match a phrase from list.

For example:

“I’ll Follow, You Lead”

Thinking “inside” the box

“I’m Willing, He’s Able”

“How YOU doin” – thank you Joey Tribiani

This is just an extra we took since Beckett looks just like

Dominican Republic’s Juan Pablo Duarte!

And what SHOULD HAVE BEEN

the winning photo…

I am a “pot” of a hole

ANYONE who is willing to get into a pot hole for a picture deserves first place, but I digress…

* * * * *

Reconvene at 6:00 for drinks and food.
Each team uploads their 3 best pictures.
A winner is decided (did I mention that we were robbed of first place this year???)
And then….

Watch the End of the Year Video.

For the last two years I have helped J.No with the EOY video. And it’s A LOT of work. It’s a 45 minute to hour movie that captivates a whole audience of rowdy adults through its entirety with no problem. How, you ask, can an iMovie of pictures and video captivate grown ass people for that long??

Here it is:

Imagine watching the past 365 days of your life chronicled in a way you’d never be able to remember it and then set to music. It can singlehandedly make you realize how beautiful life could be and how beautiful your life really is, beauty here defined as the people that surround your life daily, the people that make you happy to be alive, the people that become your family whether or not they were born to you.

There are so many good moments that come with living abroad.

But people don’t tell you about the hard part. The hardest part. These people that enrich your life everyday, that become as much a part of your life as your parents and your children eventually… leave. These are the people that visit you in the hospital when you have your baby, who make you meals when you are sick, who throw you baby showers, who are overwhelmed with happiness when you get engaged (or married), whose children are your children’s best friends. Essentially, this life style sets you up for heartbreak. You fall in love with people who you will have to say goodbye to.

The last section of J.No’s EOY video always highlights the people that are leaving. For me, it’s usually a tearjerker and this year’s was no different.

Although…

This year’s EOY video was almost perfect. Almost.

See what J.No didn’t add to her Goodbye section is that this is her last year too… she has stepped down from the position as our fearless leader from the EOY video.

She sent an email that made my once happy little heart drop:

“I want to make this my last EoY Video. I want to pass it on. I want someone else to do this next year. Do it people! Step up! Be a leader! It really is fun!”

Gasp. Our crawl will no longer be led by our leader, J.No. I get it. I understand her being done. (I’m not happy about it, but I understand.) It’s a lot of work and sometimes in life we do things for longer than we want to (or should) because people depend on us and we don’t want to let them down.

But don’t worry, J.No. You have never let us down. In fact, you have been a yearly reminder of how much good ~~people~~ friends will do for you just to make you smile for a bit.

And as for the video, well, you left it in good hands (I think).

I’ll take it from here…

To our fearless leader in the crawl, from all of us whose lives have been celebrated because of you THANK YOU, chief. “We’ll love you long after your Gone, Gone, Gone.”