Samba Nights

It has been a few days since I last wrote. We have been enjoying the Rotary District Conference since Thursday afternoon. All the presentations have been in Portuguese so we are getting about 15% of the message, which is probably not much different as when we go to seminars back home. We did our team presentation in Portuguese on Friday afternoon and it went great. The audience got really interested when I showed the picture of the cheesesteak so I elaborated on how awesome they were and they all were invited to Philly to try one. This morning there was a tree planting ceremony and a balloon launch that carried the Rotary banner across the sky. We were lucky because the banner which was being carried by 5 large helium balloons just barely cleared the antenna on top of the hotel.

The real highlights have occurred during the Rotary sponsored parties at the hotel. On Friday night there was a traditional Amazonian dance group who put on a short 20 minutes show. They were all dressed up in these elaborate costumes that were representative of the region. At one point in the show one of the dancers pulled me and Mike up and had us dance with the group in front of the audience. I'm not sure why but it keep getting targeted for things like this. I had no idea what I was doing but I managed to pull out some of the old moves circa 1989. Next was the talent show which was really just Karaoke with live musicians and people were dancing. We were dancing most of the night as every time any of us tried to sit down someone else would ask to dance. I learned how to samba and some other things I'm not really sure of. Last night was the awards dinner with a live band so there was more drinking and dancing. All this dancing is helping to shed a couple pounds. I'm just about swimming in my pants right now and when I where my Rotary Suit Jacket I look like that kid from "Big" after "Zorba" the fortune teller shrinks him back to kid size at the end of the movie. That's it for now. Have a good day!