OUR FIRST LIVE PRESENTATION

We had a whole day's polishing and refining of our presentation on Saturday 24th January in Umhlanga Rocks. Nivashni's mom sent us a delicious mutton breyani that she had prepared specially for us - and fortified by this wonderful meal, we made our plans to do our first presentation to the Rotary Club of Empangeni on Tuesday evening 27th January.

We chose Empangeni because they were good enough to invite us - and also because they are Brendan's sponsoring club. We arrived there after a long drive, Jonathan from Port Shepstone, Santosh from Durban and Siyanda doing some low flying from Howick. Brendan and Nivashni (who brought her sister Rekshree along), had shorter drives from Empangeni and Richards Bay respectively.

We were welcomed very warmly by the Rotarians of Empangeni and in particular by their President, Jim Dowe, who has spent time in Hong Kong and told us lots about it - makes our excitement even greater! The meeting started with the induction of a new Rotarian into the club which was a great thing for the GSE members to witness. We were all introduced to the 'newest Rotarian in the world'. Then it was time for us to present and with Brendan having sorted out all the technical stuff, we were ready. Each one of the GSE team did a great job and we were complimented very kindly by the Rotarians and their Anns and partners. A couple of good ideas were suggested for making our presentation even better, one of the suggestions being that we arrange for a rolling photo collage of beautiful and varied pictures of South Africa to roll as a slide show in the background once our presentation has been completed. We are definitely going to do something about that.We then had a great supper and good fellowship and eventually left just before 9pm for our trips home. Before leaving, we had a group photo taken with President Jim which is posted above.

Well, that was a big milestone for us, and now it's last minute preparations and packing. We have been issued with our electronic airline tickets but we are still waiting anxiously for our itinerary. No doubt we will have it anyday now and we can't wait to see what the next month holds in store. We'll keep you posted.