Lucy and I arrived in Okemo today to participate in the 11th Internacia Semajnfino Esperantista in Okemo, Vermont. We arrived around lunchtime to find Ludlow packed with people. There was a street festival going on with barbequed chicken and the centerpiece being what appeared to be an auction of life-size, psychodelic painted llama statues on wheels. It was like something out of a bad dream. We picked up supplies for the reception, checked in to our room, and then signed in to the congress. It was fun to see old friends and meet new acquaintances. As the last time I was here, people were playing kub.
After opening remarks, in which I participated by speaking a bit about ESNE and my trip to AIS, and dinner, it was the interkona vespero. Normando had prepared two games. For the first, people needed to find people that matched criteria on a sheet of paper like, "someone with blue eyes, someone who likes to bicycle to work, someone who plays golf". That was a nice mixer and got people to walk around and ask questions of everyone. Afterwards, we played a quiz game. Normando said that when he was in Russia, people played these kinds of games every day -- they were fanatics for trivia game -- but that the questions were impossible, like "In Puskin's third book, there is a woman who has a large stove -- where does she keep her mothballs?" (I'm making that up -- I don't even know the Esperanto word for mothballs.) My team didn't win. One of the teams had called themselves the steluloj, but when Normando was reading off the scores at the end, he called them the stultuloj by mistake and, with everyone roaring with laughter, had to humbly ask their pardon.
Finally, it was time for the ESNE reception -- I read my speech and then invited people to partake of the wine, soda, cheese, crackers, hummus, and apples that various of us had brought. It was a wonderful end to an exciting first day of the congress. Many people thanked and congratulated me on a wonderful reception. Allan congratulated me for a successful beginning as President of ESNE. At the end, as everyone was filtering out, I noticed that someone had written on the white board "ESNE: Esperanto Societo de Nov-Anglio Bonvenigas vin-on".