Dylan in Mamelodi, South Africa: This One's for the Ladies

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This one was for the ladies

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“Date Night” Better Known as Female Appreciation Night

Unannounced to me, there is normally something on Cru Summer Projects known as “Date Night” Now my last project was in leading a backpacking ministry in Grand Teton National Park, so there wasn’t really the time or resources for a “date night” Now when I first heard the title, I must admit I was a bit mortified and for a moment I wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into. Later I found out it was really just a time where we showed appreciation to the girls on the project by making nice dinner with ambiance, writing some notes of encouragement, having their picture taken and an epic slam poem courtesy of Matt Logan. If you think this sounds odd, I don’t know what to tell you, other than its just tradition on project to treat girls the way they should be treated.

There was planning that went into this late into the night. There were any times when girls tried to come into the dinning hall at Kilnerton that they were shooed away with many caveman-esque grunts. Dinner was pasta, chicken, salad with vinaigrette and an epic cookie brownie dessert. The presentation and quality of the food may have actually been the best of the trip - so huge credit to the guys that cooked. The dinning hall had been transformed with purple table clothes and maybe a hundred candles traded off for the fluorescents. The whole thing went off without a hitch and it was really cool to see the guys come together to do all the different parts of the evening, from hours in the kitchen, baking with the right amounts in the metric system, ambiance music with acoustic guitar and violin and the greatest poem I have ever heard.

Overall it was really nice and any mental capacity I was using to stifle my doubts about the idea quickly were traded for taking mental notes on the things we did for future reference.

Somehow Akeem and I banged out some group portraits in the last moments of the golden hour. Chalking this one up to a great assistant and gorgeous models.