Friday

The IBD meeting officially started today. We sat in a large horse shoe arrangement so we could see almost everybody. We each had assigned seats with our own name and country on a name plate. I sat between Grethe from  the Netherlands who is my official big sister and Elissa the American Chairman. The International Chair welcomed us and we had a roll call. There were about 42 at the table, including the Excomm, The international director and assistant and some invited Nations. It was very "United Nations" There are 4 of us here from Australia.

During the day we had some discussions of motions that required a vote, a number of presentations, some workshops and some discussions that did not require a vote. Of course we also talked over lunch and morning and afternoon tea.

One of the programs that did get supported was the Leadership Exchange [Program, which had run for 2 years as a pilot but is now permanent. IT is the opportunity for potential leaders of the future to present a paper on some topic that will advance leadership in the organisation and I was able to meet 2 of the previous participants in Malaysia. I can see how we can leverage this program to strengthen our own up and comers, even if they don't actually get on the international program.

The evening event was a dinner at a folkloric restaurant. As well as the local food we were also treated to local singing and dancing and at one stage they had most of us up in a conga line, only doing the local folk dance steps instead. There were 3 men and 3 women dancing but they had multiple costume changes during the performance.

The meal started with glasses of Rakia on the table. This is what we had the night before, except tonight they were about twice the size. After sculling mine I was offered another which also went down the hatch. It seem to kick it quite quickly. I had only half a glass of wine for the rest of the night.

Unfortunately the music, interesting as it was, was quite loud and it was difficult to have a conversation. By about 10 or so there was a group of us sitting on a couch  in an alcove on the way to the toilets. WE were all from Asia/Australia - ie those whose body clock insisted it was 3 am or later. The bus arrived about 11 to take us back to the hotel which was not that far away. Some people had even left earlier and walked back, although I knew it was mostly up hill.