PONY Baseball’s Asia-Pacific Zone Meeting

My firm's sabbatical program grants partners a six month leave of absence from the office. I planned my sabbatical for August 28^th-February 28^th for a reason: the Asia-Pacific Zone Meeting. My husband attends this meeting every January, held at a location somewhere within that zone. This year's meeting was in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Due to work responsibilities and having my children at home, I never felt comfortable traveling so far to accompany my husband. My sabbatical, however, was the perfect opportunity to do so. This year's meeting was held in Indonesia. On our way to Jakarta, we stopped in Tokyo for a few days for PONY, then traveled to Taipei to visit our good friends the Chens.
Once we arrived in Jakarta, PONY field directors from around the zone began to arrive. The countries represented were: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. Not everyone spoke English, but that was the most frequently heard language. The common denominator, however, was baseball...and the desire to better the children of each country through the sport.
After Friday's welcome, the directors met all day Saturday.  With all their business concluded and the meeting adjourned, everyone boarded buses to travel to dinner together, I learned that there was another common denominator among this group…FUN. 
Dinner was held at an outdoor venue with beautiful landscaping and lighting for dining at night. We sat at long, narrow tables and shared the platters of Indonesian food that was served to us family style. I was happy to see that people genuinely enjoyed each other's company…with laughter abound and constant camera flashes and selfies. A live band played on an outdoor stage and several from our group took up dancing and singing along with the band. I just loved seeing the 6 foot plus Russian dancing with an equally tall Japanese man.

Those that didn't want the night to end, reconvened at a local karaoke studio near our hotel. Now imagine this….old American songs played in English, shown with poor quality videos produced somewhere in Indonesia (?), sung by several different nationalities, with different accents, and ending with James Taylor's You've Got a Friend where we all joined hands.

I understand so much more about the world having traveled and spent time with folks who are different than I am. What I learned is that they may look differently, talk differently, worship differently and even eat different foods. However, there is good in people from all corners of the world and when the day is done...everybody likes to have a little fun once in a while.