Canterbury Rotary

I apologize for the lack of blog activity this past week. I was in Canterbury, England visiting James on a surprise visit. That is why I couldn’t mention it on the blog, but now you know and now he knows. My visit to Canterbury was two fold, see James as well as visit the Canterbury Rotary Club. This past Tuesday I enjoyed lunch with the club and exchanged banners with their president. Note; he wears a large crest that says “President”, maybe the ORBRC should invest in one… Also, a lot of the other members had ties with the Rotary emblem as well as a smaller one below it which might be the sign for England or Kent, I’m not sure. Their large wooden wheel that can be seen in the pictures bears this same crest. Anyways, I got there a bit early since I had to walk there and I wasn’t exactly sure how long it would take. Everyone I asked said “up this road, a ways…” which wasn’t very encouraging. James came most of the way with me, but his hairline fracture held him back the last bit. I figured it was a straight shot and I could handle it by myself. When I got to the meeting place, which was the Kent County Cricket grounds, there were several buildings so I asked at the main office where in fact the meeting was to be held. They directed me to the correct room and there I met two very energetic and nice Rotarians, one of them being the vice president. I spoke with them and got an apple juice from the bar. Everyone gathered in the room at about 12:30 and we were seated for lunch at 1pm. We were served minted lamb with mashed potatoes and veggies. Mint is not something I would thing to put on meat, so it was a bit weird at first, but then my palate got used to it and it was alright. Didn’t add any extra mint sauce though, that was a bit much as far as I was concerned. After lunch we had dessert and as my table was the last to be served our meals we were the last to finish and the last to get dessert. I had a bowl of fruit, which was quite a luxury after living in a college apartment for a few days where fruit is quite scarce and ramen noodles and pasta in abundance.

The club has about 60 members, and it seemed like not everyone was in attendance. As I learned, it was the first time they had ever met in this particular room and its possible that some others showed up at the wrong room and saw no one was there and decided it was a holiday. The room was quite nice, overlooked the cricket greens. Doesn’t hold a candle to Melton Lake, but it was nice nonetheless, and it wasn’t raining, which I was afraid of. At the end of the meeting a nice Rotarian, whom I had not met during the course of the meeting offered to drive me back, which was quite generous of him. So that was that and I was on my way. Their club functioned much more like ORBRC than the club here in Granada… maybe that’s just because I could understand what was going on…