Rotary District Conference- Part One

Thursday, I went to school for a couple of hours, having spent much of the previous night packing. (I was very proud of having fit EVERYTHING into one bag, including sleeping bag and pillow.) I hopped into the car with my parents, drove across town, picked up a bunch of other kids, including inbounds from Germany and Belgium, and drove for about three hours, stopping only once for a visit to the world's most vomit-inducingly unsanitary rest stop, and finally arrived at this nice, new conference center. We all disembarked, said goodbye, and lugged our luggage inside, where, near both a prodigious fireplace and a waterfall that spanned two floors, we received nametags and packets full of junk inexplicably advertising this conference we were already attending. My nametag, unfortunately, was misspelled "Aubrienne", so I spent a good quarter-hour trying to get it fixed by a particularly loquacious registrar-type guy. Finally, with my slightly smeared, but correctly spelled nametag in tow, we were ushered downstairs, past the silent auction and behind a curtain into a very odd space indeed. The walls were lined with empty cardboard boxes with "Office Furniture" stamped on them, and a large section of the floor was covered in neat rows of these boxes, perhaps two hundred in all. The floor was cold, plain concrete, but at least someone had thought to use one of the mysterious boxes as a table for some store-brand granola bars. Throughout the course of the weekend, whenever we were not needed, we were herded down here into what I will affectionately refer to as "the dungeon".

Shortly after our arrival, we outbounds were pulled aside to be given our official Rotary blazers, complete with an embroidered Rotary Youth Exchange logo, a unisex (aka elephant-sized) white polo with the same logo, and a name badge in the shape of Oregon. Interestingly, my name was spelled "Aubriann" on the badge. We were told that we were to wear these all the next day, along with the khaki pants we had brought and the "rotary smile" that we were expected to be able to muster up, despite looking like four-year-olds playing dress up with their dad's old clothes that went way out of style a decade ago ("Mommy, look! I'm a pilot!").

In all fairness, these people are paying thousands of dollars to send me and my comrades all over the world. The basic point of the weekend was not that we have a good time, but that we be paraded out on stage to show these people who their money's going to.

We were then given several hours of "free time", where we sat around the dungeon, sometimes sneaking out into the silent auction to nab some of the chocolate, popcorn, coffee or tea that had been set out for the Rotarians. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to make off with six teabags of assorted flavors. Eventually, we were told to come upstairs to meet with the families that would be hosting us for the weekend. One by one, my fellows were picked up by strangers, until finally there were only fourteen girls left. We were told that we would all be staying in a rental house that Rotary had managed to acquire for the weekend, since they couldn't get enough host families. We arrived, unloaded our suitcases, and left to get dinner at the Mongolian Grill.

This particular establishment provided relatively decent foodstuffs, but as I poured my sixth ladle-full of lemon sauce on the stack of noodles I had pieced together, my converse slipped and stuck in the remains of others' Mongolian endeavors. Leftovers in tow, we trooped back into the cars and set off for the house, where we were offered yet more food, mostly desert-like. Eventually, we settled in to sleep in various bedrooms around the house.

To be continued...