Well. This is it. The end of GSE from District 9830 to District 5220...
I'm not quite sure what to make of it right at the moment. The title above tells me that we've had 5 weeks of GSE. On one hand, that seems like a lifetime. My life at home seems very far away. The relationships we've developed here among the team, and with our hosts, are very much at the forefront of my mind.
On the other hand, I'm acutely aware that this has been a slightly unreal diversion from life. Sometime, in the not too distant future, we'll all be heading back to our lives at home and trying to make sense of them again. Which parts of the GSE experience will we integrate into our lives? Will we be changed by the time away? Which memories will slip by the wayside?
These are questions for which I won't have answers for some time...
Our GSE experience officially concluded with our departure from Modesto airport. Most of us were flying to San Francisco. I'm not sure why it was booked this way, given San Fran is only a few hours drive away, but it is the way the travel people booked the tickets. Michelle actually wanted to end up in LA, so she manage to change her flights to fly directly there. It really is good by now! The team is splitting up.
We gathered together our loved ones (aka our Modesto hosts) for our final good byes.
In a way, our hosts in Modesto were representing all of our hosts over the 5 weeks as they wished us well, and accepted our grateful hugs. Thank you everyone for your generosity, your kindness and for sharing your lives with a bunch of upstarts from the antipodes... Thank you especially to our weekly GSE Coordinators for constructing such an action packed and rewarding program. Thanks Dave, Victor, Bruce, Dorothy and Chris.
Goodbye kind Modesto hosts!
Our last thank you goes to Terri & Howie Amerio-Bell. GSE Chairperson Terri put in an enormous amount of work to make this exchange possible for us. We appreciate it. Symbolism is sometimes dangerously close to cliche, but we hope that you enjoy Errol's company, and that hew reminds you of a great GSE, and a job well done.
Errol finds a new home with Terri & Howie
(Sarah's still distraught...)
(Sarah's still distraught...)
The next step...
So, where do I finish this blog? None of the 9830 team are heading immediately home, so our time in the USA is not yet at an end, and our experience as GSE members has some time to run as well. We've still got presentations to make at home, lives to improve, decisions to make about what we'll do when we grow up... In a lot of ways, it's a beginning rather than an end.
The start of the next chapter:
Michelle arranged to fly from Modesto to LA, only to have her flight break down and abandon her in Fresno. Little did she know she was to have another GSE blast from the past on her trip! (She hitched a lift to LA with one of our hosts).
Chris headed to Ohio to reacquaint himself with wife Pat and a Rotary Student Exchange friend they'd hosted years earlier. His trip wasn't smooth either. His bags didn't make it, and he was much later to Ohio than expected...
Bobby arrived. Yay! Sarah and her partner Bobby headed off to kontiki tour the South and to chase fun in the sun. By all accounts, they found it!
Glen and Will delivered Sarah safely to Bobby, then spent the afternoon in San Francisco experimenting with clam chowder and beer. Then it was off to Seattle to tour Boeing and Glen's load cell manufacturer. Then the beginning of a long road trip in a convertible...
We've all got more stories to tell, but you'll have to seek us out personally to hear them.
We'll leave this blog as a record of our GSE experiences.
If you were part of making it what it was for us, then thank you.
And if you have the chance to be part of GSE in the future... go for it!
No comments:
Post a Comment