File Photo of Stephen Lewis and Jerri Clout. Blog by Jerri Clout/ Special to Baytoday.ca July 31, 2008 - Day One – 6am It is just after 6 am, and we are 16,000 feet above the ground. The sunrise is beautiful from the plane’s window.
File Photo of Stephen Lewis and Jerri Clout. Blog by Jerri Clout/ Special to Baytoday.caJuly 31, 2008 - Day One – 6am It is just after 6 am, and we are 16,000 feet above the ground. The sunrise is beautiful from the plane’s window. In a few hours we will be in Mexico City.
Let me introduce myself to those who don’t know me. My name is Jerri Clout and I am 15 years old. I am going into grade 11 at West Ferris Secondary School this fall. I love playing sports, music, hanging out with my friends and working with Patrick 4 Life Foundation on HIV Education. I have been a part of Patrick 4 life for 3 years now. I am the Youth Ambassador along with being the founder of Youth 4 Youth and ex-offico board member.
Thanks to a scholarship provided by the Ontario AIDS Network, my mother and I are travelling to the 2008 World AIDS Conference in Mexico City for 10 days. This is the second World AIDS Conference we are attending, the first being the 2006 conference in Toronto. We will be blogging throughout our days in Mexico to keep North Bay posted on the latest progress on HIV: possible vaccines, youth initiatives around the world, prevention and our personal experiences.
We hope to be able to bring back many new ideas about how to take on this devastating disease. The AIDS Conference is a great way to network with other people involved in the cause and become joined in the fight.
The plane is about to land so I will be off now.
10am As we settled in for our 3200Km flight we looked up to see Stephen Lewis board the plane; Global HIV/AIDS activist extraordinaire. Having met and heard Mr. Lewis speak on HIV and AIDS on a number of occasions I am in awe of all he has done. One of life’s coincidences; Mr. Lewis’s wife, Michele Landsberg was one of my judges for the Top 20 under 20 award. She recently sent me a note and encouraged me to look for Mr. Lewis at the conference and to be sure I said hello. With some encouragement from my mom I did go and say hello and had a nice chat with him. Mr. Lewis was also helpful during customs, he has done it so many times before.
10 pm Wow! We are here and what an evening!
As we drove into the city it was clear this country is very different than Canada. The heaviest traffic days in Toronto look like a joke compared to what we saw here today. We sure didn’t mind though we had a comfortable taxi with a very nice driver, so we sat back and got a look (sometimes shocking) at the city. This is quite a city.
Having been awake since before 4AM we were very tired and didn’t feel like doing much, however I was able to talk my mom into an authentic Mexican meal before we crashed. It was certainly worth it! It was a very unique experience complete with a mariachi band. I have never seen so many servers in one place and all in an incredibly good mood. They were really friendly and had a lot of fun with two Canadian girls who don’t know much Spanish. One curious thing we noticed was there were only male servers?? We had a blast trying to figure out the Spanish menus and with the help of the servers, had an excellent meal!
Adios!
Jerri
Jerri will be sending BayToday a daily blog update, however, if you would like more information, please check out her websites : www.patrick4life.org or www.youth4youth.net. Also, feel free to email Jerri at [email protected]
