Sorry we have lost a couple of days, as you can imagine it has been really busy but absolutely fantastic and we promise to catch you up. But highlights include school visits, botanic gardens and seeing the Goodman Theatre.
But anyway this entry is all about Friday and the weekend....
Friday - we were up early with our bags all packed including additional suitcases.
And off we went to the Naval Academy to watch the graduation ceremony. This was a real treat as this is the only academy in the whole of the US for the entry level training for naval recruits. 936 graduated with a heap of wonderful pomp and pageantry and we witnessed it all from the dias, and apparently graduation occurs every week! It was a neat experience.
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Then off we went to Lincolnshire and the Rotary District Conference. Its all a bit of a blur but we joined the Paul Harris Luncheon and then presented in the afternoon and then had pre dinner drinks with the District Governor before sitting down to dinner with the Inbound GSE Team who arrive in NZ from Illinois in April 2009.
Friday evening the kiwis enjoyed wine tasting and swing dance in the Hospitatliy Rooms before finally getting to bed about 2.00am ish.
Saturday was bliss, we wore mufti, caught some ZZZZ's, went shopping (oh and how we shopped!) and then got our sparkly outfits on for the banquet dinner. Oh and by gosh there was dancing!! Some latin dancers taught us salsa and meringue and swept us off our feet and we finally got to bed about 2.00am ish!
Up early Sunday and Cheryl and I went to Willowcreek which is best described as a mega church. Its 33 years old, and it was a fantstic experience. Normally a congregation of 7000, the 9.00am service was only 4500 (!), and included a full rock band and 11 piece orchestra. It was a wonderful service and suprisingly personal for something so big. Wayne, Brent and Kate, headed off for a game of 16" Soft Ball which is much like the name described but we'll let them tell you more later....
This afternoon, Wayne, Brent and Naomi got to meet Dan Seals, a Democrat Congressman trying for office and a close colleague of Barack Obama. There is a huge amount of support in this area for Obama and gosh its going to be interesting to see whats going to happen at the elections.
This is our last week and all of a sudden we feel like we want everything to slow down as we don't want this great trip to end and we definitely won't want to say goodbye to the wonderful friends we've met.