Debate 21: The University of Western Kentucky, Bowling Green, KY.

After another early start (4am!) we headed to Portland Airport for a flight back to Texas. The flight was clearly popular with other celebrities and sporting icons, as Asaffa Powell (the fastest man in the world over 100m) checked in with us. We are now pretty used to the Transport Security Administration’s procedures and the flight to Dallas was very smooth. After a quick bagel lunch we transferred to our flight to Nashville, Tennessee. An hour and half later we were welcomed to the state by giant signs in both English and Japanese (apparently Country and Western music is a big deal in Japan and attracts thousands of visitors a year) and went in search of our luggage. This proved to be rather more problematic than we had hoped as only one of our three bags had made it from Portland to Nashville. The staff at American Airlines were very helpful and were able to tell us that one of our bags was now in Alabama and one was in Atlanta. Our hosts at the University of Western Kentucky had arranged for a driver to pick us and he drove us across the border to Bowling Green for our next debate. Western Kentucky has an extremely well developed Parliamentary Debate and Individual Event programme and is a regular stop on the US Tour. We faced the school’s debate coach and a graduate student on the motion: “This house believes that hard power is better than soft power”. The debate was well attended and we were pleased that one of the Professors thought that our jokes were an improvement on the last few years. After a tasty meal in a local Serbian restaurant (there was a large influx of Balkan emigrants to Bowling Green in the 1990s) we retired to bed, exhausted and still lacking all our belongings…