District Conference Well Attended

Our Rotary District 7790 held our annual conference last weekend in Lewiston. We had a great turnout of local and international Rotarians. This was truly a spectacular weekend! Thank you to all who came out for the entire weekend or for one of the wonderful events.

We enjoyed a cajun Mardis-Gras meal at the Franco-AmericanHeritageCenter hosted by Paul and Rita Dube followed by entertainment upstairs in the concert hall. Rotarian Michel Kozlovsky of Cap-de-Madeleine Rotary Club in Canada treated us to his deft hands dancing over the concert piano. He graced us with several melodious arrangements.

We concluded the musical evening with the crowd-pleasing Girls of L-A who had the audience up on its feet and swaying, dancing and singing along to their upbeat music. The L-A Girls came back together for this very special encore performance. The L-A Girls are Bette Sanbourn, Bonnie Edwards, Debbie Morin, Kathy Haley, Jeannie Martin and Laurie Sidelinger.

After breakfast and morning sessions on Saturday, we welcomed our district's 25 high school Youth Exchange students who joined us for lunch and mingled with all the Rotarians. We also enjoyed a brief musical concert with two of the youths...Tobias from Austria on piano and a young lady from England on violin. Following lunch many of the group took advantage of local excursions hosted by our very own Rotarians. They had the option to hike at Thorn Crag with Adam Dow, take a walking tour of downtown including Sts Peter and Paul Basilica with Ed Plourde, take a tour of Museum L-A with Stephanie Gelinas, field shooting with Mac McPeake or golf with Phil Nadeau.

While the afternoon excursions were going on, the Youth Exchange students and their leaders set down to work painting a mural in a downtown Lewiston storefront. The mural was designed by one of the students Cara Forke who is hosted by the Quebec-East Rotary Club. When finished, the mural will hang on the store front of the former McCrory's.

We concluded our Saturday evening with the Governor's Gala in the Ballroom at the Ramada Inn. This event was certainly the highlight of the weekend! We had over 200 people in attendance including our Youth Exchange Students and the GSE Team from Reunion/Mauritius. We also had a delegation from France who came out in support of DG Sylvia Plourde. RI President John Kenney was represented by Robert Menconi and wife Monica from Florida. Represented at the event were people from 5 of the 7 continents! Now that is impressive folks!

During the weekend, the Auburn-Lewiston Rotary club hosted the Hospitality Suite for late birds to come socialize, drink and enjoy munchies. Thank you to the Auburn-Lewiston Rotary Club for seeing to it that our guests had a good time.

If you missed this year's Conference, you can reserve the date for next year's conference which will be held in Quebec and hosted by 2010-2011 Claude Martel on June 3, 4, 5, 2011.