Rotary members make connections in the House of Friendship during the 2014 Convention in Sydney.

By Margaret Lesjak, Rotary Club of Broken Hill South, New South Wales, Australia

I grew up in Sydney. So attending my first Rotary convention last year in Sydney was less about the location and more about meeting people from all over the world.

My days started off on the trains dedicated for Rotary use. As I remembered from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, people happily chatted away and strangers became at the very least ‘mates’ for the rest of the convention.

Even among the throngs of people, I kept bumping into a few Rotary members I knew from my district (9520). I found many of the speakers at the opening session and others pertinent to my work in public health and relevant to my past experience living in Pakistan.

I met two women from Mexico whose husband/father had been a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Nyngan, a small country town in the center of New South Wales. I had visited Nyngan several times. But on the last night of the convention, their quest to meet someone from Nyngan came true. One of the guest speakers grew up there!

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