Rotary 1930 GSE 2007

Dear Rotary friends, dear host families and dear all other american friends,

we did really enjoy every second of our GSE trip in district 6420 in Illinois!

We can't thank you all enough for the great time we had!

We will keep staying in touch and we would be really happy to have our american host families or our other new american friends as our guests in germany!

Thank you all so much,

Barbara, Beate, Ekke and Jürgen

German GSE team 2007 from district 1930

Galena - without any words ...

Meeting with Rotary club Oregon

After Rotary meeting in Rockford with Lindsay

Tribal custom bikes Rockford

Milan's Rotary Club with president Mark Beckwith

ready for the CUBS game at chicago's wrigley field! Go CUBS!

After seeing the Field Museum in Chicago with the exhibition of the "Ancient of America" we headed up to the Wrigley's stadium, named to the guy who invented the chewing gum. Wrigley's stadium is the playground of the Chicago Cups, on of the events what you have to see on a trip in America. Even it was raining and the played very badly we had much fun together with more than 35,000 people.

On Thursday we visited the capitol of Illinois in Springfield and meet the Senator of LaSalle/Peru there. Afterwards we were able to see the fabulous Lincoln Museum which amazed us with excellent holographic theatres and explanations about his life. It is really worth while to go there.

On Friday - means today - it was time to say goodbye for some of us. Tomorrow Barbara is leaving to NY, visiting her brother and Beate is making a fine live on the Bahamas for 7 days. So we invited our friends and hosts of Rotary for having fine German food - Paniertes Schnitzel, Bratkartoffeln mit Gemuese and Salat- cooked from ourselves. As dessert we served icecream with hot cranberries!

On the one side everybody is glad to go back to family, wife and friends on the other side we know that we had a great time, have been growing together and hat lots of fun with new friends from America. But thats life and life says also that we see us twice in our life!

On Friday we left for the District Conference in Rochelle, were we stayed in the Comfort Inn, the best hotel in town. It was very interesting how wide spread the program of the Conference was, and how professional the different presentations were. Our own presentation also was successful and we could discover the town afterwards.

Saturday the first thing to do was getting picked up for a plane ride. The little aeroplane could only lift 4 people, so that we had to go two times in seperate groups. I could not believe that the pilot allowed me to fly on my own (Beate, sitting on the back seat, also could not..) - amazing!! We flew to Dixon, and from there along the Rock River up to Oregon (directly over the huge statue of Black Hawk, The Eternal Indian) and back to Rochelle.

In the afternoon we made our first attempts in playing baseball with the new bought racket from Juergen. It was big fun, but hopefully the Chicago Cups, which we will see tuesday in Chicago on Wrigley Field, are able to perform that a little better than we did...

In the evening we went to De Kalb, were we enjoyed a extremely good live band performing. Still not knowing how that could happen we were picked up by the taxi Beate had ordered - which turned out to be a Stretch Limu with a mini bar inside - YES!!!

@betty

After all the spring has been coming. Today we had almost 65 degree Fahrenheit (about 18 Grad Celsius).

We have been still staying in Rockford, the third largest city in Illinois with nearly 150.000 citizens. Here the U.S. Rockband "Cheap Tricks" comes from. They are very famous in the States - in Germany seems to be not. Beside the cheap tricks  there are lots of other crimes in Rockford. After visiting the Fire station headquarters, where we saw the newest technology for receiving emergency calls we went to the Rockford Police station, where us the nice Deputy Chiefs welcomed. They explained us having enourmous problems with gang violence and drug dealing. But also 19 homicides were registered in 2006. (15 solved up to now, what is pretty good in my opinion). We really enjoyed the visit there. We had lots of fun with them, but the most funny questions were, if Germans drank WARM beer (of course not) and how fast we can drive on our "Autobahn", because they would like to drive on our roads with a PORSCHE. FYI: in case of free traffic, you can drive 200 mph!

In the morning we met the major of Rockford, probably the youngest for this city size in the States with 36 years. If Chigaco win the Olympic Games for 2016 Rockford will receive the White Water kayaking. They plan the first indoor kayaking course.

About Thursday we don't wanna talk too much. It was almost a shame for the men in the group then we went the first time to a Bowling center and lost against the professional female player Barbara! Incredible in our opinion was the manager of the Bowling center, a really kind lady which invited us for the bowling after having recognized that we come from Germany and have never played before.

Afterwards we met some students from and in the Rockford University who gonna visit Germany in May. We had a pleasant conversation about stereotypes, politics and customs of both countries.

@betty 

In the meantime we saw a musical called "Showtime" from the Highschool in Freeport, which was very impressing.

The next day was interesting again: We visited a ethanol producing company, had vine testings and toured a milk-farm, before we had to leave on the following day to Rockford.

Here we got a fantastic welcome, and directly at the first evening tickets for a indoor American Football game, which was amazing! Of course "we", the Rockford Raptors, won..

On Sunday we were again brought to Chicago - this time with opened shops, and at least empty moneybags...

for more impressions of our rotary meetings click here

http://blog.com/photos/album/606004/

@betty