2/8-2/9- District Conference
Stephanie's and my host fathers were in charge of planning the 75th Anniversary Platinum District Rotary Conference, which would also be the last conference as one district. On 1 July 2013, Bangladesh will become two districts, which is great because that means more and more Bangladeshi's are becoming rotarians! This also means there is a LOT of work involved in planning this 2-day conference for nearly 2,500 people.
Like father, like daughter...
Gazy and I...met him on my vocation day for event planning. He designed all the signs and setup for the conference...very talented!
We as a GSE team are extremely fortunate to get this opportunity to come to Bangladesh...1. because they are still one district so we were able to travel all over the country, visit many new rotarian projects, meet many more people, and 2. this is the last year that Rotary will have GSE teams. They will be changing the program to focus more on vocations.
The District Governor invited us to a wonderful pre-conference dinner at his beautiful house where we met a lot of the guest speakers for the conference. We had fun dressing up in our Sari's and seeing old and new friends. Poor Meredith wasn't feeling good so she stayed at home. :(
The District Governor and his beautiful wife...
Our lovely Fawzia....
One of the sweetest, most gracious man in Bangladesh (Steph's host father in Chittagong)
It was so much fun to see everyone at the District Conference and felt like a family reunion. We were able to see some of our family members who we had stayed with across the country.
We love and miss Sizzil...
We also met hundreds of more people, and smiled for thousands of more photos. It became so crazy with photos that we couldn't walk to the 'washroom' by ourselves without getting stopped every two feet for photos. Once one camera came out, we would be surrounded by 10 more with everyone wanting to pop in the pictures. After a while it became a game, and eventually my host father would come rescue us and become our bodyguard. He is very protective of us as his daughters. We also laughed that we should have been charging 100 taka (.80 cents) for someone to take a photo and we would put it toward a good cause in Rotary, but in reality we would have done quite well. :)
There were many phenomenal guest speakers and at one point we presented our views and experience about Bangladesh. Now I can't wait to share them with the rest of the world.
We laughed as they would walk around holding the 'silence please' signs....
So I do have to admit that Stephanie and I went shopping for a few hours during the conference. However, it was my host mom's idea and two girls would never say no to shopping. We also left a little early the first night to attend another beautiful wedding. It was very productive. ;)
Just wanted to thank everyone in Rotary who was apart of the planning committee for the District Conference. They did an outstanding job and it is one conference I will never forget!
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