Whirlwind Week!!

Wow!
My feet hurt and my head is spinning, but this week has been so much more rewarding than I thought it would be. For the last 2 1/2 days, I've been chauffering 5 Argentinian women around our area, visiting businesses and introducing them to American culture as much as I can in between events.

Part of their commitment to the Rotary Foundation is to make presentations to Rotary Clubs in the different areas they tour. So after picking them up on Wednesday, we went to the Angier Rotary Club, which holds its meetings in an old, renovated train depot in downtown Angier (about 30 miles south of Holly Springs). After enjoying good Southern hospitality there, we loaded into the van and headed to Raven's Rock State Park, where the ladies enjoyed a presentation about the state park system and statewide efforts to preserve as much land as possible in the face of increasing development. The ladies hiked to the rock with another member of our club (Willem) while I raced home to get Kennedy and Mark!

After the state park trip, we all met back at Tollan Wade's farm for a cookout -- hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad, cole slaw, chili for the dogs, and chocolate kalhua cake!! All the host families were there and everyone had a chance to relax and get to know one another. Tollan is our resident author of adventure books who is from South Africa originally.

The kids (some of the adults included) played soccer on the lawn, and I think Kennedy has a crush on Tollan's 8-year old son. She said to me in a quiet moment: "Mom, I think I REALLY like him! He said he has no friends because they all say he's boring!" I asked "Why do they think he's boring?" And Kennedy's reply was, "Just because he has a rock collection and wants to be an archeologist when he grows up... why would anyone think that was boring! I mean, I want to be a geologist when I grow up (news to us!) and that's almost the same thing!" :)
Alex Wade is a walking encyclopaedia at age 8, and Kennedy thinks he is fascinating. I think we'll be visiting the chicken farm a LOT this summer!! :)

Yesterday (Thursday), we started at Willem's house for coffee and tea, then went to a presentation at Wake Tech's Business and Industry Center. It was fascinating and I think the team is pretty jazzed up about the idea of instituting a "workforce development" program in Argentina after listening to what we do in the States. After the presentation, we had an hour to kill, so Vitaliy (the van driver, also a member of our club, originally from Russia) and I introduced them to a coffee house in Apex. They had never had lattes before, or bagels, so that was fun to watch! :)

The team presented at the Apex Rotary Club at 1pm at a Carrabas Italian Grill restaurant and then we headed to Cary to visit the publisher of Cary Magazine and Triangle East magazine. They got a tour, heard a presentation of the publishing business, and the house photographer took their picture -- it will be in an upcoming issue of Triangle East magazine and the ladies are VERY excited about that!

After the magazine publisher, we found an hour to stop at the mall! You might think that was a bit frivolous, but they don't have malls in Argentina like we do here, so it was definitely a stop they wanted to make. :) After a stop at Rainbow Lanes (bowling alley) Clayton to present at the Rotary Club there, we all headed home for the evening.

Today (Friday) they are spending the day in Raleigh, and the Raleigh West club has a full day of activities for them -- tonight we pick them back up at a social hour the Raleigh Club has planned for them, and will be taking them bowling! Serena joined us this morning for breakfast and they have invited her to go out "clubbing" with them tomorrow night. The GSE team from this district that will be going TO Argentina in May is also a group of young women just a little older than Serena, and the two teams are going out tomorrow night together. Serena is hoping to get an invitation to travel to Argentina and stay with members of the team, who are very receptive to the idea, so we'll see what happens.

As for me, I am going to spend the rest of the day getting some much neglected work done and taking a quick nap before I have to go back and pick the team up. It looks like we will be taking them to the beach at the end of the month before they fly back to Argentina, so we will get to see them again before they leave!

It's been exhausting, but a lot of fun, and I think I've learned as much from them as they have been learning from us! :) I'll post some photos in a couple of days...