Work Trip Yields Delicious Rewards
We were invited to attend the Ayusa Exchange Program annual conference - in San Francisco, CA! Okay, Dan was invited and we petitioned to go starting in December. We knew it was going to be a lot of fun … and terrific food. We had only just arrived when who did we see? Our 3 friends from France! We had a wonderful time catching up on news with them. Dan was too busy talking to notice that we snuck out of the conversation. We knew from past experience that every table had a bunch of candy and snacks.
Dan warned us from the start that this was not going to be a “free ride”. We were there to spend time learning. T hen, if we earned it, we could go on some outings and get some treats. First, we learned that every training conference has a theme. This year’s was ‘PURPOSE is Power.” What the heck does thet mean? We already had a purpose- to party and eat lots of snacks! (After doing all the “work”, of course.)
Since we promised to be on our best behavior, we sat and listed to some pretty boring presentations. Basically, what we heard when we weren’t snoozing is that it would help everyone do their jobs better when they got home. Attendees seemed to be taking a lot of notes and there was a lot of applauding. Guess that means it was interesting for everyone else…?
You may remember that we often host parties for exchange students at our house. We always have a lot of fun playing in the snow and nibbling on their snacks. So we were very interested to learn that the goal for the 2025-2026 school year is to have 800 students placed. That sounds like a lot of work (good luck, Dan)!
We took a break and returned to the table to find treats. At least this part of the conference had some direct benefit. They also had us look on a globe where students come from. We heard students came form over 50 countries this year!
We went on a field trip to the AYUSA home office. They had a special wood relief map of the world! Some of the attendees helped us all find our country of origin (home country).
We learned that the company does a lot of things with students besides exchange - they can work at camps, do au pair assignments (kind of like babysitting), and do other kinds of volunteering.
Their office has the cleanest kitchen we’ve ever seen. Even better, there’s a never-ending supply of snacks and beverages. Employees can eat and drink whatever & whenever they want! We were immediately more interested in getting jobs with this program. We talked to Dennis (the President), but he said we are too young and we don’t have the correct work visas. Maybe we will get those and return.
Later there was a really interesting panel with people from foreign countries. They answered a few questions and had some great stories about their experiences. Glad the attendees from our countries got everything right - they didn’t know we were actually paying attention!
And, the best highlight- eating out at a very fancy restaurant. Everyone was very generous and allowed us to sample some great food. For dinner, we had:
Super burger with spiced fries and a side of fried spring rolls
2. Korean ribs with spicy coleslaw - Yum!
3. Str fry over rice with fried Tofu. MMMMmmmm.
Thankfully, the restaurant was only two blocks from the hotel. We ate so much and couldn’t have walked further. More about our trip soon!
-Scottie and Friends