Week #2

I know this won’t garner much support from you people in Ontario, but our weather here has stunk almost since we arrived – but when it warms up, we will be complaining about the heat. The temperature is to reach 80 this weekend, but that is as high as it’s been since we arrived.
We had Convocation this week and all the volunteers were invited – normally only half are invited since there usually two Convocations per month. With cutbacks, there is now only one class graduating each month. Besides challenges with funding, participants are hesitant to leave work for four weeks because of uncertain job scenario.

Convocation remains a very special night with a great meal and many happy faces from those graduating. The training is intensive – usually 8:00 am – 7:00 pm, and many nights there is group assignments. Since most participants are business leaders, many are not completely cut off from work, with laptops, blackberries, Skype, etc. We did have a corporate banker from Bulgaria who claimed he was completely disconnected, but he didn’t convince me. So 23 graduates join the over 74,000 HI alumni worldwide. Departures of participants and remaining faculty are this weekend and our new group don’t start arriving until next weekend. So we have a week with the building empty except for volunteers. The dining room is closed and we will have eating out, a family dinner, and scratch up what you can.

We have a devotion each week with one of the faculty and this week it was a lecturer from the United Arab Emerates. He talked about the situation in that part of the world
This is a quiet weekend activity wise – one of my goals for this term is a helicopter ride to the Haleakala Crater, so we priced it out. Because of the slowdown in tourism, activities like it are priced much lower. So there are some benefits from a weak economy.
Once again our time here is going quickly, is very rewarding ith the work and meeting new friends.