It has been a crazy 3.5 months since my last post. Our team has gotten together several times and we are starting to learn more about each and I know I'm really getting excited about going to Italy. I'll briefly talk about some of the events of the past few months.
Our team first met each other in early February in Mattoon. We had a brief but incredibly useful Italian language session with Professo Dominica Amato and then enjoyed a fine Italian meal prepared by Mike's wife, Diane.
In early March we met in Champaign and made great progress on discussing clothing, brochures, and much much more.
In late March, the 'Inbound' GSE team from Italy arrived in our District. I had the opportunity to meet with them as they toured my workplace, the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Later in the day my wife and I attended the Champaign West Rotary Club meeting, where the Inbound team gave a presentation about their country that I found very useful.
In April our team had the opportunity to get together a couple of times. First, we met in Urbana and spent a fair amount of time taking team pictures. Later that day we received from our friends in Italy the first version of our itinerary, and it definitely made things more "real" to start seeing the plans that were being made for us.
Later in April, our 6490 Rotary district had their yearly conference and the team was invited to attend. It was a very useful experience as we learned more about Rotary, had ample opportunity to again meet with the Inbound team, and worked on more issues for our trip. We peppered the Inbound team with questions about what to expect in Italy and how everything would work. They were very gracious and answered question after question.
Now it is May. Just last night we got a more detailed version of the itinerary for the first 10 or 11 days of the trip. We have information about the vocational visits that each of us will be going on, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we are even more excited. We have another planning session coming up in a couple of days and we are really looking forward to May 13!
Stick around. It's going to be a neat ride!
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