A beautiful sunrise where we started our day in Islamorada, an island in the Florida Keys.
Our first event was at the beautiful 'Treasure Village Montessori School.'
A wonderful sign and artwork from the children welcomed us to this unique school.
The beauty of nature as well as the children's colorful artwork were truly uplifting ways to start the day.
This sign is quite relevant to the essence of our message as well. It reads: "There must be provisions for the child to have contact with nature to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature." Maria Montessori
Our team entered this scenic school to the enthusiastic response of the children and teachers
The children were very attentive and curious as we introduced our Peace Run and our runners.
Brahmata from Canada leads us in the first exercise to create a peaceful environment.
The teachers are also quite soulful in their participation in our exercises.
Our next event was to have children guess where we are all from with clues that would hopefully help some of the children show us their geography knowledge.
Most of the children easily guessed New York from recognizing this imitation of the Statue of Liberty, who also holds her torch high to welcome visitors with peace and liberty.
One of our most popular events is singing and doing the actions to the World Harmony Run song composed by Sri Chinmoy, Founder of the Peace Run.
Another popular event that the children love is to judge our short skits which demonstrate either a good and peaceful action or not so peaceful action such as displayed here.
Assistant Principal Kristi Brucia gladly accepts our gratitude gifts for their enthusiastic participation in our Peace Run events. The colorful painting by Sri Chinmoy, Founder of the Peace Run,reads: "Peace is the indomitable response to life's every challenge"
Finally, the children get to run with the Peace Torch around the school yard.
Children also love to hold the Torch and make their wishes for peace and harmony.
The children also love to get our official Peace Run cards with beautiful photos of some of the 150 countries we run in and share our exciting Peace Run events.
We are very grateful to all the children, teachers, administrators and parents who welcomed us here today and shared in the joyful energy and beauty of sharing and spreading peace.
After the wonderful event at the Montessori school we visited the Ron Levy Aquatic Center in Islamorada.
We were honored to meet two very special people who work here, Jennifer and Andrew Dutton. Jennifer has many long distance swimming accomplishments, among them being the 8th person to swim the length of Lake Geneva, nearly 44 miles, in 33 hours. Andrew is on her crew team always escorts her from a nearby boat.
Jennifer and Andrew were very grateful as we presented them both with the Peace Run Torch-Bearer Award to honor them for their many decades of hard work, discipline and tremendous achievements which have helped and inspired many people, young and old, in the world of swimming and fitness in various cities. While coaching their students in the Boston area for many years they have won the state championships multiple times.
Jennifer told us stories of some of her amazing self-transcendent adventures and achievements. Jennifer has also been a swimming instructor for people of all ages here at the Aquatic Center. She was also nominated for the 2021 Performance of the Year Awards.
We were very happy to present our Certificate of Appreciation to Maria Baglotta, the Director of the Ron Levy Aquatic Center for allowing us to come here and present these awards and to meet with Jennifer, Andrew and some of their students as well. We also did a bit of swimming ourselves.
Jennifer and Andrew have a face time call with Olga, one of our friends in Europe who has been coached by them and is planning to come back to Islamorada to train for some more serious long distance swimming competitions.
Our team with Jennifer, Andrew and some of their students and friends. We are so grateful to all of them for this wonderful experience.
Dave Morrison Jr. enjoys a peaceful moment in this beautiful tree after our uplifting ceremony.
In the afternoon in Miami we ran to the Miami Shores Field House and Athletic Center for the after-school program.
We made our presentation to a group of very interested and attentive children in the park there.
Marina leads the group in an exercise of feeling peace from the heart and allowing it to grow and spread our into the world.
Dave Morrison and his wife Santiva from the Orlando area north of here help to demonstrate one of our songs with the children.
Dave Jr. offers clues to the children to try to have them guess where he comes from.
Each of our team members tries to get the children to guess our countries with the condition that if they guess them all correctly we have to sing them another song.
Durjaya and his wife Drishti who live close by in Miami have worked hard to organize our events here for a few days.
One of the counselors, Clarissa, and a young member of the athletic center enjoying our presentation.
Since the children guessed all of our countries correctly we taught them our World Harmony Run song with actions to accompany the words.
Brahmata from Canada accompanies us on our World Harmony Run song with her ukelele.
We also performed a couple of skits for the children which demonstrated either a good and peaceful action or a not so peaceful action which they had to judge.
The children looked on attentively to judge this bad behavior.
Helping someone who has fallen to the ground was judged as a good behavior. These simple and amusing skits demonstrate how peace can spread to others through simple acts of kindness or contrarily through bad actions we cannot bring about more peace in the world.
Clarissa happily takes the Peace Torch and leads the children around the park on a mini Peace Run we sometimes call the 'peace train'
Passing under the bridges on the peace train.
The children were also quite content to be able to pass the torch around to each other and to be able offer their own wishes or prayers for peace.
Kylie, one of the Supervisors here at the Field House, happily accepts our Certificate of Appreciation on behalf of all the children and counselors.
We are very grateful to all the wonderful children and staff members here who welcomed us and share in these precious moments of peace and joy.
Spontaneous moments of peace and fun. Some of the children naturally demonstrate their happiness as children usually do through their amazing energy, strength and enthusiasm to play.
