Living in the USA, I’ve restricted my Rotaract travels to the location of the Rotary International Conventions aka. RIC (2005 Chicago, 2006 Copenhagen, 2007 Salt Lake City, 2008 Los Angeles, 2009 Birmingham UK, 2010 Montreal). I always have a great time at these celebrations – yes that’s right the Conventions are a celebration. It’s a gathering of hundreds of Rotaractors from all over the world to share ideas, partner on service projects, and to get to know each other and celebrate together our common mission. Just look at these pictures below from the Birmingham and Montreal RIC. Doesn’t it look fun?
Ok, but now I’m in Belgium and I’ll count that as Europe. So I’m going to take every chance I get to go to the Rotaract meetings over here. The first one was REM in Amsterdam – it only takes 2 hours to get to Amsterdam from Brussels. The weekend went by very quick; I arrived on Friday night and left Sunday after breakfast. The committee put on a really good show: opening session in a “not that old” church (which means built in the 1800’s), local pub crawl with host clubs, more meetings, canal tour, Heineken tour, and a fancy dress gala.
But the best part about it was it was so good seeing my friends again – some of those Rotaractors I’ve been Conventioning with since 2005 and some I just met in June in Montreal. This time in Amsterdam I met another great bunch of them from all over Europe and I’m excited to see them again in January at the next REM in Belgrade! (Click below to look at my pictures.)
http://picasaweb.google.com/Annie.Marek/REMOct2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ_Fj_Kkre74ugE
See you later,
Annie
FYI - Amsterdam is far too big to see it all in just 36 hours so I’ll be back sometime this year.
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