Hey everyone.

  Today I begin a series of blogs with an International flavor. The title that I’ve chosen for this blog series is: “It’s A Small World After All”.  For those of you that have been in the past to either Disney World or Disney Land, probably remember the amusement ride “It’s A Small World After All.”  This ride has been around for many years. When taking a ride on that amusement it used to be so uplifting and give me a feeling of togetherness and love throughout the world. It usually took me days afterwards to get the song “It’s a Small World After All” out of my thoughts. That song and the Disney venue as displayed through the innocense of children signified world-wide happiness and cooperation among all people.  I love what it represents!

The International Festival that “Beau” so thoughfullyt informed me about was attended by us two on this past Saturday on the grounds of Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Fl.

It was such a wonderful and uplifting event. The weather was perfect, the attendance was great and the parking was plentiful and free! There was no admission charge and besides the 5 full hours of beautiful entertainment, there were a number of covered booths where students from FIT from the various countries proudly displayed  items of interest from their respective countries, as well as cordinally provided the public with gratuitious samples of favorite food items that are consumed by the people within their homelands.

The majority of international students that attend FIT come from many of the countries in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa.  So the majorituy of exhibits and performances focused on those regions of the world. However, there were a scattering of representation from Europe as well (but primarily Ireland and Greece from my recoglection).

When I was explainimg to you in a former blog, that animals bring me such joy (like during my visit to the petting zoo at the fair) I wanted to let you know my other passion is conversing with people from other countries to learn more about their cultures, beliefs and overall way of life.  If I were to begin my career all over again, I think I would have loved  being a foreign diplomat, if not a veternarian, or maybe both professions.  I love people and animals from all over the world.  My hopes is that someday we could all co-exist in  in peace and harmony and that the haitred of others and political arrest would simply go away.

Over the course of the next week or so, I will be posting many videos from this wonderful Saturday event. I couldn’t help taking so many videos, because they brought me such joy. I now want you all to experience this happiness within your homes that this wonderful event provided to me.

The title of the follow-on international blogs will be the same; “It’s A Small World After All”, but at the end of each title will be Video # 1, Video # 2, etc.  I did not necessarily video each dance or musical performance in their entirety due to space limitations on my cell, but I wanted to give you the flavor of this beautiful event.

Since I have written such a long blog message here, some of my follow-on blogs in this series might just have a video or two and some still photos, without another narrative.

Enjoy! 

Luv Gary