One of the perks of working at the Embassy is when President Obama comes to town is that we get to attend a ‘Meet and Greet’. It’s a pretty amazing opportunity.
When the President came to Manila last year I took Adam and Malcolm and we were able to get a blurry picture to prove it.
Not the best photos. This year Adam made it into the kids area! I’m still waiting for the White House photo of all the kids next to the President but for now see if you can find Adam below.
Perhaps you’re wondering how you end up meeting and greeting the President. Well, first you have to head over four hours early to wait for the buses. We headed over and whiled some time away.
Finally it was time to board bus to head over to the Meet and Greet spot.
Once we got to the tent we luckily had screens to occupy us for a couple more hours.
Luckily we had good friends to spend the time with.
Knowing how much the President loves kids I knew that it was worth convincing Adam to wait in the kids area to get to spend some close time with President Obama. The age limit was 6 but Adam and his friends Victoria and Maddie were able to sneak in. I was hopeful that having his friends around would help Adam make it through. The kids had to wait a very very long 40 minutes.
Luckily when Adam started getting antsy a very nice secret service agent brought Adam over for some words of encouragement and maybe a bribe of ice-cream if he could wait just a bit longer.
After a nail biting 40 minutes we made it!
Well, we all didn’t make it. This one went ahead and slept through his second Presidential Meet and Greets.
Adam got the chance to give the President a high five!
It’s pretty amazing that we had the opportunity to hear the President speak in person and even shake his hand!
We had spent the morning talking with Adam about President Obama and how he was the President of the United States. Right after this all went down I asked Adam if he gave the President a high five and he replied yes, but not the American one, the Philippine one. President Obama was the only one up there so I let Adam know it was in fact the US one. It’s so interesting watching him try to grasp with concepts such as where we live, where we’re from and reconciling these. These may be simple concepts for some but for us it takes a bit more explaining. Some times when I ask Adam where we’re from he answers Greece, sometimes Egypt, sometimes Manila, sometimes New York. I love it! So many experiences that Adam and Malcolm have had already in so many amazing places and so many more to come!
bosas-from-us.com 