Welcome the Kiwi's

We were pleased to have the Rotary Group Study Exchange Team from New Zealand here last week. Pictured here are team leader, Murray Hartnett and his team of Myles Taylor, Paul Bonetti, Steve Goeldner, Meriene Hardy-Birch, and Blair King.

Here to enjoy our visit with the “Kiwi’s” was Charlotte Ryan.

The GSE team gave a thirty minute presentation about New Zealand in general and told us what each of them does. They are here in exchange for the team that Rotary District 5440 sent to New Zealand in March and April of this year. They will be in our District for five weeks. They arrived here ten days before they visited Windsor.

Some of the facts they told us included:

• 43% of the land in New Zealand is dedicated to agriculture.
• There are 47 million sheep in New Zealand.
• They export $2 billion in lamb meat annually.
• 30% of the land is forest preserve.
• Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of New Zealand…same person.

One of the highlights was the presentation by Meirene Hardy-Birch who sang her greeting in Maori which is one of the Maori traditions. The team members all talked about having the standard two children except Meirene who has seven children. She also told of the jade amulets they wore around their necks. They are called memory stones and are given to travelers. The legend is that the stone collects the memories of the travelers. When the traveler comes home, the jade is given to the children to be passed on to later generations so that the stories go on forever. Neat idea. Tell your kids about your good memories.

If you want to see more of the New Zealand GSE team, they will be at the Rotary District 5440 Convention in Cheyenne in a couple of weeks.

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Hank Aaron only had one "inside the park" home run out of his current record of 755 home runs.

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