Photos include kinds of tequila at a tequila factory in Arandas. They gave each of us a bottle to take home!! Posing with sculptures near a studio and on the street. Chapoy wearing our NY Yankees gift cap. A Rotary club donating a wheelchair to a drug rehab clinic. And some fun stuff.
Our GSE tour in Mexico ended on May 25th with the four-day District Conference in San Miguel de Allende. We arrived at Bradley via Atlanta in the wee hours of May 26th with all of our luggage and our loved ones waiting to greet us.
During our tour, three of us suffered Montezuma's revenge and my bout decided to take a significant hold on my life upon our return! I'm still undergoing treatment for the e.coli bacterial infection that has wracked my system, but I am on the mend. We were in Mexico during its hottest time of the year, and I also came back dehydrated! So, my advice to anyone traveling to areas where you can't drink the water and it's very hot, take along a prescription of Cipro and a supply of packaged electrolytes that should be taken with bottled water.

Most of us are still overwhelmed and amazed by how much we did in the 5 weeks we were away. It's really unbelievable. And readjusting and getting organized have been difficult. The experience blew us away.

This is my last posting ... the only things we have left is to present some programs for Rotary clubs and others about our GSE adventure and fill out our final paperwork for Rotary International. ...

When we left Tequila Country in Arandas, we headed to Guadalajara for four days where we met the Inbound GSE Chair Jaime Chapoy, one of the most punctual people I've ever met. What a great guy, and his wife was such a dear. He had led a team to Australia a few years back and practiced his English with us. Guadalajara offered us some great opportunities for shopping, visiting the U. of Guadalajara, and seeing some great sculptures. We visited the Rodo Padillo studio and came upon one of our host families from Tepic. What a fun surprise. We toured the Mathias Goertitz museum and a hospital whose services are available to people with no social security, and we slurped down a typical Mexican treat made with shaved ice and flavorings such as coconut or mango. Delish!

Maroli, one of our Rotarian friends from Zapopan, hosts a radio show once a week that sings the praises of Rotary. We five were the guests on the hour-long show. Pretty neat. Maroli also helped me perfect the speech I would be giving at the District Conference -- in Spanish.

We did even more shopping in Tlaquepaque, an arts and crafts city. Great stuff. Good people.

The weight of our big GSE adventure started lifting from our shoulders as we approached the day of our presentation at the District Conference. It has been SO busy for us with vocational visits, cultural visits, planning for conference presentation, continuing our presentations at Rotary Club meetings, and trying to maintain ourselves.

We were offered so many opportunities to consider matching grants with several clubs in District 4150. I'm organizing that information to share with District 7980.

On Wednesday, May 21, we arrived in San Miguel de Allende. Great touristy town. Neat shops.

In addition to the plenary sessions where no awards are givne, there was lots of entertainment. At the formal dinner dance on Friday night, it was all about fiesta and dancing. Daughters of Rotarians were also part of the evening as one of them was chosen "princess" of the event. Interesting. In addition to being energized by the Youth Exchange presentation -- 50 young vibrant people from all over the globe -- we presented our Conference program. The girls did a fantastic job. They rocked to an absolutely full house! A slid show of the sites of Mexico and our time there in addition to the faces of our new friends all put to music prompted hand-clapping and cheers throughout. I am so proud of what our team did!

We headed for the airport early Sunday morning, redistributed our luggage to avoid hefty fees for excess weight, and two of us had to pay a fee for our "lost" visas -- which we didn't know we had to keep. Oh, well. We're back. We survived. In some instances we thrived. And we represented our District well in Mexico while learning so much about our neighbors. I'm proud to have served.