I would like to give my apologies to start this off. I was running around a bit before the meeting and had to have my suspicion’s confirmed that I was to write the Rounds for this Wed. meeting, thank you Mr. Russell.
We were welcomed with a smile by Kathy Austvold and greeted with a warm handshake by Mark Bring. The nice, substantial invocation was spoken by John MacFarline. Mary led us in songs, with Jamie and Keith at the same table many were able to find a comfortable pitch, I personally kept looking, never to find it.
We had a couple of guests, I brought a guest, my son, Austin and Gary Orcutt a visiting Rotarian from Wadena, blessed us with his presence. Lois led the way on brags, mentioning the great harmonies brought to us by Kieth and Jamie, I followed Lois with a brag that my whole family almost made it to this meeting and another for our new family member Pepe’s upcoming presentation. Mary Petit bragged about her brother Paul who was barefoot skiing at that moment, for his 60th birthday. John MacFarline reminded us of the upcoming Bi-Centennial of the agreement with England to make the land, north of the Mississippi drainage and south of the Canadian border, part of the United States. Our visiting Rotarian bragged about his 37th wedding anniversary and the fact that he would be retiring tomorrow, Aug. 31. We sure hope to see a lot more of Gary. Steve Leitte chipped in a buck for his grandson attending OH University.
I introduced our speaker and foreign exchange student Jose Romos aka Pepe. ’Pepe’ began his speech letting us all know why we call him Pepe’. Pepe’ is short for Jose, just like Jo is short for Joseph. He then proceeded to give us a little history and cultural lesson of his home country, Mexico. Mexico, which official name is “Estados Unidos Mexicanos”, is a country located in the southern part of North America:
Territorial Expanse: near 2.000.000 km2
Habitants: 119 millions
Political Division: 31 states and one Federal District (Ciudad de México)
Languages: Spanish is the official language but there are also 67 indigenous languages
The human presence in Mexico goes back 14,000 years. After thousands of years of cultural development, new cultures were born at the mexican territories, these cultures were split in three different sections (Mesoamérica, Aridoamérica y Oasisamérica). Spanish people conquered Mexico after their arrival in 1521. After almost 300 years of Spanish domination, Mexican people started a fight for their political independence on September 16th of 1810. They were lead by Miguel Hidalgo and his people. This war finished on September 27th of 1821, 11 years after it started. After gaining its independence, the Country was involved on a series of internal wars and foreign invasions for almost a century; this created a huge impact on the lives of the Mexican people. Two of the most remembered events are the “Puebla’s Battle”, which happened on May 5, 1826 and the “Mexican Revolution”, which happened on November 20th of 1910. During a big part of the 20th century (mostly the first half), there was a period of economic and political growth led by only one political party. All these events have culminated in what is today's Mexico.
Pepe's state, Chiapas, is located in the south part of Mexico. Its capital is Tuxtla Gutierrez, the most populated city in the state. This state contains a lot of the most important tourist destinations in Mexico. Chiapas has a great diversity of weather, biological species and habitats. It has a lot of mountains, jungles, woods, and valleys. It also borders Guatemala. It was created on September 20th of 1786 and attached to Mexico on September 14th of 1824. Tuxtla Gutierrez is the capital of Chiapas and the most populated city in the state with 598,710 habitants. Its name comes from the Nahuatl language, and means “Land of rabbits”.
When Pepe’ was finished, President Steve presented him our club banner and Pepe’, in return, presented us with a wooden sculpture of a Myan King.
We had a quick club assembly, which I mostly missed, and proceeded with the rest of our day. See you all la próxima semana! (“next week” for all you gringos)
