The End Is...Here!

Hello again fellow bloggees and bloggers! Well, it looks like the exchange has now officially come to a close. We had our farewell dinner on Thursday night, and I was most pleased to see a large number of my previous hosts in attendance. Great food, great company, and, of course, our finaly summary speeches were the highlights of the evening (at least I hope our speeches were part of the highlight - ha ha)! It was great to see everyone again and reflect on the amazing adventure we were all involved in! It's hard to believe it's over - seems like we just arrived last week! Having busy (but not hectic) itineraries certainly helped to pass the time and make the experience all the more amazing.

On Friday, I got the opportunity to visit the Surrey Police Headquarters in this area. I spent some time learning more about their dispatch centre, and found that they have an amazing GPS mapping system to track their officers. It's connected with a type of Google Maps template, which means that operators can "zoom in" to any specific area and see what houses are there, as well as view terrain and other geographical characteristics of any given area in the Surrey region! This tool would be GREAT for us in Canada (especially for myself to use when giving directions to lost officers!).

I also got the opportunity to see their K-9 dog training facility. Can you believe they have 26 dogs for the Surrey region alone?! We've only got 3!

We then went to the firearms training centre, and I received a wealth of information from the firearms training centre officer there, who actually turned out to be the son-in-law of the hosts I had in Redhill, Malcolm and Kate Walker! Small world eh?!

We then went for a fabulous lunch at the Lobster Pot (I was being shuttled around all this time by Janet and Victor, Janet is the president of one of the local Rotary Clubs, and is a former County Councilor, while Victor is the former mayor of Farnham, and also a former Rotary Club president - escorted by celebrities - it was pretty cool!). They ended their day with me by giving me a bobby helmet (which fits!) along with a centennial King George Coin, and a book! Very nice indeed - made my day!!

Afterwards, we headed to Janet's son-in-law's house, and he showed me his amazing police memorabelia collection, and we wheeled and dealed to trade RCMP and British memorabelia when I get back too, which is great!

I then got to chat with a local community police officer named Ian, and he drove me around his patrol area, and introduced me to his fellow Farnham officers - I've never felt like more of a celebrity than I have on this trip, let me tell ya!

That night, we went out to a local pub and had a great dinner with Scott and his host family! Yet again, good food, and good company!

Saturday was our last outing of the trip, and we spent it touring London, led by Roger, who was a wealth of information! We saw St. James' Park, the exterior of Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, then went for lunch at a nice little pub nearby. Afterwards, we saw the London Opera House, and toured more area sights, then Scott and I said farewell to the group, and toured the HMS Belfast destroyer docked on the Thames near the Tower Bridge. Very interesting, and very cramped quarters as well!

Scotty and I then went out and painted the town, in this case, we painted it GREEN in honour of the live theatre performance we saw, "Wicked", which is the tale of the wicked witches in the Wizard of Oz (who really wasn't all that wicked, it turns out!). It was fabulous, and both the witches were very well acted, and the singing and stage effects were phenomenal - well worth the money!

This morning, I said farewell to my last hosts, Gord and Bebette, who were great! They had a wonderful home, and were just all-around good, helpful people! I only regret that I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked, but that's how it goes I guess!

I'm now sitting in an internet cafe awaiting my bus to Munich. Hopefully for the rest of the group's sake, that volcano will stop erupting so that they can all get home, but it sounds like they are in good hands in Farnham with their hosts, so I don't feel TOO sorry for them! They just might get put to work though (so they threatened - ha ha) but they can handle it!

Well, fingers crossed that the transit Gods are smiling upon us all! I have about two weeks left in my journey, as I continue on to travel through Germany and even into Czech Republic - looking forward to it! Hopefully I won't return to London for my trip home May 8th and find the GSE team still waiting!! That would be a bummer!

Next on my agenda, the Moses Lake Conference in Washington May 22nd! It'll be great to meet up with everybody again, and share our trip highlights with the Washingtonian Rotarians! See you all there! Auf Wiedersehen!