District 9600 Conference

March 26

We did not attend the Saturday morning session as we needed to work on our presentation.  We presented earlier in the week in Maleny and spoke for nearly 45 minutes.  They said we could go 30 minutes or so because it was an evening social with their spouses.  None of us realized we spoke for such a long time.  Our aim Saturday morning was to trim the presentation to 20 minutes.  Both the Australian team and our team were allotted only this much time and we did not want to be cut off during our presentation.  After we worked on the presentation and trimmed off a few slides, we attended the luncheon and stayed for a short time during the 2nd plenary session.  Our host families from Mooloolaba then took us home where we relaxed a bit before getting ready for the Mardi Gras governor's banquet that evening.  We wore our maroon polos - Queensland's official colors and brought plenty of beads and stuffed animals to hand out to the convention goers.  Several were dressed for the occasion and they even had a costume contest.  Following a great meal of either fish or fillet mignon (they alternate plates for their functions), the band played and we did a bit of dancing including a second line Mardi Gras dance.  Jonathan misplaced his famed monkey "GG" and was quite upset.  We thought a convention goer thought it was a gift and walked off with it.  Turns out Robert and he switched places at a table during the evening and Jonathan left it there.  Robert had picked it up and put it in his backpack.

March 27

We arrived at conference at 8am as the VTT presentations began at 9am.  The Australian team went first and spoke for 25 minutes but were not cut short.  We followed and also spoke for 25 minutes.  Went well.  Presented banners from the District, the Lafayette-North and Thibodaux clubs to the Governor. Oh, and because the conference goers knew how much GG meant to Jonathan, they insisted GG be on stage for our presentation.  Following the presentation, we were interviewed by a college student who was needing to complete an assignment for one of her courses.  Conference closed at noon and our host families took us back to Mooloolaba.

-Harold