It is actually a small country, if one considers the fact that in just the two nights that we spent in Kansas city a fewspecial celebrities of the American space decided to show up there as well. First there was the famous college basketball finals game between Mizzou (Columbia University, Missouri) and the Jayhawks (of the University of Kansas). The event brought much of the midwestern lovers of college basketball to Kansas City where the event took place, and they remained there till the next day when Mizzou won. On Saturday was Usher Raymond the musician who on a nationwide tour. Yesterday afternoon, there was news of perhaps the biggest fish of the weekend: former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. She was in town to promote her new book America By Heart.

The town of Andover in Wichita, Kansas, where she was visiting was two and a half hours away, westwards. We didn’t go there to see her as we had first planned, but that was only because of the constraints of time. By Saturday night, about a hundred people had already arrived to stay the night out in the cold in front of the store where she was billed to sign books on Sunday, and the line to see her stretched eventually to about 500 people. Even if we had set out early on Sunday, we might not have stood much chance of seeing her and getting back home on time. We went to Independence (MO) instead on the way home to visit the President Harry Truman home, museum and Presidential Library. That turned out to be a good decision. We learnt about his life and his love for his old country home even when he was president and how people would always gather in front of his home every time he returned from Washington. President Truman was the successor to Franklin Roosevelt, and he was the one who ended the Second World War after dropping the bombs on Japan.

In the last three days, I learnt more about the World War I and it’s implications for World War II and other future conflicts than I’ve ever learnt from reading books or from conversations. It was a holiday well spent.