Chicago and Future Plans

Last Weekend I went to a huge conference in Chicago. We performed on Wednesday and Saturday. They absolutely loved us. But besides performing, I got to talk with a lot of Rotarians. I talked to one from Switzerland and she was really nice, and even gave me one of the pins she had on her blazer. I like talking with them, They always have really fun stories, or really good advice to give you. We (as in all of the exchange students in the show) didn't go to any of the sessions of the conference. Steve Selvick, the one who was in charge of the whole conference, and the one who was in charge of our show, thought that we deserved to be doing fun stuff rather then sitting through meetings all day long. We had a coach bus to use the whole weekend, which was really convenient. On Saturday, we went to the Shedd Aquarium, and got to see a dolphin show, and beluga whales! haha. so that was a lot of fun. We also
got to tour the Rotary International World Headquarters, which was really cool. The top 3 floors were devoted to Rotary Youth Exchange. We got to see the office of the President, Vice President and President elect.... they were huge!

So here are some pictures...

Well this is most of us

At the World Headquarters, they had every flag that Rotary is associated with!

Besides the show, we also did the opening flag ceremony..... and I got to present the Swiss flag!
Some pictures of us setting up.

USA---->SWITZERLAND


Abbey, Robin, Colin, Emily, Natalia

When we had free time, we liked to use the pool... which was AMAZING! It was huge. There was an inside part, then you would swim under a bridge, which had glass you swim under. and the outside part was really big too. It was 12 feet deep outside! And of course we all wend to dive in the snow, then jump back into the pool.
Besides the pool, we would just hang out in the lobby. It was fun because every once and a while, a Rotarian would come up and start talking to us about our exchange plans and what we are looking foreword to.
The food at the hotel was amazing, we had a continental Breakfast in the morning that had the best fruit ever, and there were always heaps of bacon and french toast. Along with anything else you could think of.

On our last night there after we were done with our performance, we cleaned up all of our stuff. By then, it was like 12:30. Then Steve tells us that we wont be having a curfew that night.... so what do we do??... we set up an AWESOME dance party in Steves huge office... And what does Steve do??.... he gets us 10 pizzas, 3 pounds of chicken wings, and 5 liters of pop! (there were only like 24 of us in there). It was so much fun. I don't think we went to bed until at least 5:30 in the morning. Then we had to get up less then 2 hours later to eat breakfast and get on the bus to go home. I'm pretty sure that everyone fell asleep within 15 minutes of leaving the hotel.

So now I'm studying like mad for both school, and Switzerland. It's been a really busy year. I have my next outbound conference next weekend on on the 13th and 14th. Then the week after, I have the PETS conference where we will be performing again on the 19th-21st.