A few months before that, mom asked me if I was interested in a new program of TIAW, our daughters generation next, so I said yeah sure! I had no idea that it would be that interesting. When it came time to go I was sooo excited, I had to take a week off from school (which was cool). First I went to New York City for a day, and then to Atlanta, Georgia, where Peggy Espinda was waiting for us at the airport. She is one of mom’s TIAW friends and the first lady from Atlanta I met. We had a lovely conversation during the way and I’ll never forget the original American pancake I tried for the first time at the International House of Pancakes restaurant. After that I was thinking that all people in Atlanta were like Peggy – so warm, hospitable and nice! Maybe yes – having in mind our host Kathy Wilson-Chu, I can definitely say, yes they are! I want to thank Kathy and her family for their hospitality while we were in Atlanta and say hi to her lovely daughter.
The annual meeting was starting the next day so we had a whole day to kill.
My first impressions of when I went to the USA was: OH MY GOD!!! EVERYTHING IS SOO HUGE!!! I’ve been travelling a lot in Europe but this is different. I was so shocked by the scale of everything that I couldn’t remember all the people my mom was introducing me to (thank God that I remembered them the next day!)
Before I start to tell you about everything else I want to say that I was amazed by the wonderful job that everybody had done on this conference. Even though I’ve never been to other TIAW annual meetings I am pretty sure that this was the best one. It takes a huge amount of time, straight, and hard organisation to do something that amazing!!!
The first day was a bit weird for me, we went to breakfast but I wasn’t hungry at all, actually I was a worried that I wouldn’t fit in. So, I preferred to stay outside and help with the nametags. Everything changed after I started talking to all the nice people after one of the breaks. There were a few people that I knew from London, like Donna Heivilin, Stephanie MacKendrick and Diane Morris. They’re all so nice and interesting people.
I went inside. At first I wasn’t sure that I’d be interested in the different forums. I thought, this is for grown up people, but I was extremely wrong; as I started listening I became more and more interested. My favourite one was the presentation of Professor Jeff Rosensweig, from Emory. Talking about the role of women entrepreneurs in growing international trade, he said so many things for which I was concerned, like the demographics structure of the different continents, I mean we learn that at school so it was exciting to learn a bit more from a person besides my geography teacher.
The cocktail was great too. I got to meet many other interesting people, and I got to talk to the Professor Rosensweig and he told me some fascinating things! I think that now I’m going to consider Emory in my list of colleges.
The second day was the best ever! I met Savannah Schaeffer, who’s great! I think we can find a lot of things in common. And I met Winfield Dean, which I was so excited about because we’ve been corresponding through e-mails for a whole year without ever seeing each other.
After the breakfast the three of us stayed in the same room and three other women came in: Kay Leaumont and two other cool ladies, They questioned us about what we wanted to do in this programme and other questions like that. I was so nervous because I hadn’t thought about that at all. And after what Savannah said I was just astonished. It’s like she had prepared a speech! But then everything started going normally. They helped us decide what we wanted to do. Now I’m very excited and look forward to work
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