Days 27, 28 & 29 - Iowa City

After a mix up with our booking at Indianapolis airports, a few phone calls with Brian in Texas who coordinates all our travel, and the re-booking of tickets, we eventually got on a flight to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for our next stop. We were met at the airport by Iowa debater Corey, who took us back to our hotel. That evening we went for dinner with Paul, debate coach and team coordinator at Iowa. It was a great meal, and good to hear about the long history of debate at University of Iowa. Our trip coincided with the 150^th anniversary of debate at Iowa, and a debate alumni reunion hosted by the debate union. Iowa also has a long history of hosting international debaters, having started hosted British teams since the 1920s. It was great to hear about the long tradition of which we are now a part.

The next day we headed to breakfast with Paul at the 'Hamburg Inn' in Iowa City. The Hamburg in is a famous for its part on the US presidential campaigns – since Reagan it's been an essential stop for hopeful presidential candidates during their Iowa caucus campaigning. In addition to the great breakfast, we very much enjoyed the pictures on the wall of the many presidential candidates (as well as the West Wing when they filmed there). We then headed to campus, and met some of the debate students and coaches, and checked out the impressively well set up debate team's room, and Ryan (our opponent in the debate) kindly took us on what was a great tour of Iowa City and the university campus.

Iowa city claims to have more bars per capita of any US city, and Corey and Ryan took us out that evening to sample a few of them. We had a great meal and good fun experiencing Iowa City; cultural understanding was fostered with exchange of colloquialism and practising of accents (Ryan's, though he sounded like he was a character from Oliver Twist, was reasonable; Lewis's American accent sounded more robotic than anything else...) . The evening ended with Lewis proclaiming Corey's truly remarkable talent of being able to instantly alphabetise the letters of any word, 'the most impressive thing so far about America'.

On Friday morning, after a late breakfast, some debate prep, skyping and 'The Thick of it', we joined the Iowa debaters at the first event of the alumni reunion weekend. The team had prepared some great displays of Iowa's debate history, and we particularly enjoyed checking out past programmes of British debates, and talking to some of the alumni who had debated against British team alumni such as Tony Benn. We then headed to the Iowa Hawkeyes football stadium (which holds an impressive 70,000!) for a reception and pre-debate dinner, with alumni and University guests. The debate that evening was the same motion used by the British Debate in 1935, on “That the American written constitution is a safeguard rather than a hindrance to social progress”. It was another fun debate, again using cross examinations, and with an interesting audience discussion after. The alumni weekend celebrations continued in downtown Iowa, where we to experience more of Iowa's bar, and enjoyed great hospitality from the University and alumni. Iowa was a great stop!