Greetings From Maria -Rotary Exchange Student

 

Hello to everyone!

 

In this special day I want to reach you all with this words.

You might wonder why this day is special? Well, first of all, it is the day that the man walked on the moon 40 years ago. However, it is not the main reason I am writing you all.

 

I want to tell you a story about a man called Enrique Ernesto Febbraro, who was born in Argentina. He received many honorable recognitions of all kinds in his life, including two nominees for the Peace Noble Prize. But many people believe that the biggest thing he did was creating the Friend's Day. He wanted so much to create a day to greet his friends and thank them for being always by his side. He knew that friendship is the most amazing thing that can happen to people, so he couldn't believe that it didn't existed a day to celebrate such a wonderful thing as friendship. We have Christmas and New year, mother's day and father's day, we have independance day, animal's day, water's day... and the lists goes on. Every day in the calender is a day to recognise something and celebrate..

So, Dr, Febbraro was looking for a day in which he could celebrate with his friends, but he didn't know which one chose. The 20th of July of 1969, Neil Amstrong wolked on the moon for the first time. Febbraro felt like this act was a big gesture of friendship from our planet to the universe. That day, in every country in the world, people was happy for such a big achievement of humanity, and it is said that that day the violence rate in the world was lower than ever, meaning that less accidents and delictive acts were reported that day.

Febraro knew that he had founded the perfect day to celebrate Friend's Day. He started a movement to make it official, and he acomplished it. Today, the 20th of july it is celebrated Friend's Day in more of 100 countries in the world, specially in Argentina.

 

Some more facts:

*Ernesto Febbraro is a recognised Rotarian (he had to be a Rotarian, right!?)

*Before Apollo 11 came back to Earth, he sent 1000 letters to 100 countries, and 700 answered back. Friend's day was official then.

*He also wrote to the NASA but he never got an answer. He was sad about it.

*He said: "My friend is my teacher and I am his. He teaches me and I teach him. We both learn and we go together along the path of life, growing up side by side. Only the one who loves you, helps you to grow".

 

here I found about Friend's Day in wikipedia, and it is in English:

 

Día del Amigo  (Spanish, Friend's Day) is a celebration of friendship, held annually on July 20, mainly in Argentina and Uruguay, but also in some other countries.

The idea for Friend's Day goes back to Argentine teacher, musician, and dentist Enrique Febbraro, who lobbied to turn the anniversary of the first moon landing into an international day of friendship, along his Rotary Club de Once, in Buenos Aires. He argued that on this particular day, the whole world had been friends of the three astronauts. The first official recognition of the day came with decree No. 235/79 by the government of the province of Buenos Aires, which authorized the celebration and gave it official nature.

In Argentina, Friend's Day is often a good excuse for a common friendly gathering, though people also employ the day to get in contact with old and seldom-met friends and greet them. Since it is not a public holiday in Argentina, the gatherings tend to happen during the evening.

Though Friend's Day has always been respected, in recent years it has turned into a very popular mass phenomenon. In 2005, too many well-wishing friends led to a temporary breakdown of the mobile phone network in the cities of Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba and Rosario, comparable to the one experienced in 2004 on Christmas and New Year's Day. In the case of Rosario, La Capital newspaper reported that seats in most restaurants, bars and other establishments were already booked out completely a week before the celebration.

 

 

Thank you to all of you who are my friends. Thank you all to give me friendship when I was alone, away from home and friends. Thank you all for being part of my life and letting me being part of yours. Thank you for being nice and loving to me, making me feel like your family, not a foreigner. Thank you for making my exchange year in the US unforgetable.

 

Happy Friend's Day!!

 

I hope you are all doing great as I am. You are wonderful people, and I only wish the best for you, which is friendship, which always comes with love and happiness. It is important to never forget how wonderful it is, thank God for that gift you recieved, but most important: never forget to tell your friends how much they mean to you!

 

Love to all of you! 

 

 

Maria Eugenia Maeder, also knowed as "AO"

Rotary exchange student 2007-2008

Resistencia, Chaco - Muscatine, Iowa