Berkeley

After wending our way north and stopping at every mission, our next task was to find the Clark Kerr Conference center in the heart of the Berkeley Hills. Mike and I were invited to help with the International World Forums conference on designing spaces for Children. We have attended other World Forums in Nebraska and have made many friends from all over the world. After finding a tight parking spot for the RV and settling into our dorm room the conference began with a reception at a beautiful Julia Morgan designed church which is now the Hearts Leap Preschool. For me the highlights are always the conversations with people. Mike chatted with Patience who had just travelled 2 days to get here from Ethiopia, I helped Ken Jaffe serve the wine. I loved hearing about the containers of "junk" that my fellow Brit supplies school in the UK with for their "Building Yards". We ended the evening with some musical jamming with Tony and Robbie Christie, our friends who design wonderful play grounds for children in New Zealand.
   The next couple of days I mostly worked the registration desk while Mike helped set up posters. I made a new friend, Riccardo, from Italy. His team gave a fascinating presentation on Reggio schools in Italy. He had arranged to take 30 to visit an Italian immersion school of his design in the heart of San Fransisco. Not being confident to make the plans himself I helped him arrange for cabs to the Bart then cabs to the school for 30 people. It was quite a feat of planning and it was great to see the way people from other countries handled being sent off for an adventure with public transportation. The native Californians were the most apprehensive!!

There are always a few hands on activities.

Above are two of the key organisers of World Forum, Bonnie Neugebauer and Ken Jaffe.

And there is always fun music. Here are our Kiwi friends the Christies. Robbie had only bought his Ukulele with him so he borrowed Mike guitar for this song.

They explained how New Zealand children make faces for fun.Then they got all of the Kiwis at the conference to demonstrate !!!