Lunch with Maidson Heights Rotary!

I had lunch with my sponsoring Rotary club (Madison Heights, Michigan) on Thursday. It was great to meet Bill Deyo and his fellow Rotarians in person! I want to thank Madison Heights again for sponsoring me and for their generous good wishes and support. Thanks to Jack Salter (who has been a lifelong supporter of the Boys and Girls Clubs) for interviewing me as well. The group meets at Club Venetian in Madison Heights on Thursdays (noon) and welcomes visitors.

January 28, 2007 Group Meeting.

Well, we're getting closer !!!!!!!!!!!!! The team met at Nicole's house in Ann Arbor (here's a photo of downtown) to do some last minute preparations. We are well on our way to a great presentation.

Kim will be emailing Dr. Kunaporn to find out more details on the host families and what our attire is to be at the workplace.

We have our business and thank you cards ready to go. Brandon will be ordering the business cards next week.

The broadsheets are almost complete. We are waiting for one more entry and then we will be putting our finishing touches on them. Everything will be ready for our "trial" presentation on February 7th.

We were very excited to have received our language phrase books and the CD so we can speak Thai fluently upon our arrival. Very funny, I know. But we will give it our best shot. We may just surprise you.

We practiced our presentation. And, though we have some rough edges to polish, we have done a great job. Everyone has interesting points to share. We really do make a super team!!!!!
We haven't even left yet, and we are already discussing the possiblity of sharing our Thailand experience with many Rotary groups. We can hardly wait for the invitations to come. Just to give you a head's up..... You will be hearing from us.

Well, that's all for now. We are looking forward to sharing our presentation on February 7th and again in Thailand. We have been working hard and are expecting our overwhelming enthusiasm to be clearly demonstrated. Talk to you soon.
:-) Kim.

The BioSand Filter

Someone on the team mentioned that I should describe the work that my husband and I do with the BioSand Water Filter. We are working with a Rotaract club in Kathmandu to provide safe drinking water to schools, orphanages and now a village in Nepal. You can learn more about it at this site. http://avisionforcleanwater.blogspot.com

January 13th 2007 Group Meeting

Our all-day Saturday meeting in Chatham-Kent was a very productive day. We were able to accomplish a lot of things off our to-do list with only a month to go before we leave for Thailand.

The morning started off with an interview with the Chatham Daily News for an article on our opportunity. The reporter asked a lot of great questions. The article was published on Monday, January 15^th. They also took a group photo for the paper.

We then had an opportunity to sit with Max, 2006 Team Leader of the GSE Team to Peru, and ask questions about his team’s trip. It was a great opportunity to ask questions on what we should expect everyday, how much money should we take and things we should look forward to. Max had a lot of good advice. Thanks Max for your advice and good stories.

We were then back to the tasks at hand on our to-do list. We tackled the broadsheet. This sheet is designed as an introduction of us to the Rotarians at the meetings. It will be in English and Thai for easy reference. Great work Nicole on putting that all together.

We finished up other things like our uniform selections, business cards, thank you cards and talked about the presentation. Our major task at hand is finishing the presentation for the next meeting. We are not far from having it all put together.

Well with only one month to go, we are getting excited and cannot wait to meet and see some many new things. What an exciting time and the anticipation for each us seems to be growing every day. I am really excited to share this experience with this team. We all get along amazing and lines of communication are open.

Til next time….

Koy Nuttikan Prasoppokakorn is an exchange student from Thailand who is visiting our district. She gave a talk at the Troy Rotary and is now helping us to translate our information. She is a big help! She went with Nicole and me to dinner at a Thai restaurant and then to a lecture at the Buddhist Meditation Center in Ann Arbor. She said is was similar but not quite the same at Thailand.

January 3rd, 2007 Group Meeting

Our Wednesday, January 3^rd meeting in Windsor was a great opportunity to check out our to-do list and check things off as we went. Our group and individual pictures were taken as seen above. Lee and Brandon shared their initial 20 minute presentation layout. It was great to have so much done and an opportunity for everyone to review it and make changes.

With the arrival of our ID badges, Nicole and Kim had an excellent idea of attaching a ribbon. This ribbon would allow us to attach any collected pins along our travels. Neat idea.

Other things discussed included an additional causal uniform, a single group business card and a single black and white page introduction summary on each member. Who knew that time could pass so fast and still so much to do. As of January 3rd meeting, our countdown is at 48 days with our tentative departure date of February 19th.