In the fall of 2006 I completed my third world Drum Circle Facilitation training tour. I would like to share my experiences, stories. photos and introduce you to the Village Music Circles international Drum Circle Facilitator community!

As in every year, this tour started at the Annual 6 day Hawaii Facilitators’ training. The Hawaii Playshop is my laboratory where I experiment with my training and fine tune the curriculum for the rest of the tour.

This year I published my new Book, "Drum Circle Facilitation" and it was first used at the Hawaii program and at most of the DCFacilitator trainings on this tour.

The 2006 fall tour took me to ten countries during my three months  of travel. I taught nine weekend facilitator trainings, graduating three hundred and fifty new facilitators!

On this tour I facilitated drumming events at three music industry gatherings, 4 corporate training programs, 2 orphanages and 17 community drum circles. As near as I can figure, the total number of people who participated in these events was a little over 3,400!

I started training drum circle facilitators in the US 14 years ago and I have been training internationally for nearly 10 years. The annual European DCFacilitator trainings started in 2001. Three years ago I added Japan onto the tour and we began our world tour trainings.

In 2006 I received  sponsorship from REMO to support bringing the VMC trainings to more locations and to help decrease the price of the training for the participant. Remo recognizes the quality of the VMC training and their intention in sponsoring it is to increase the number of qualified DCFacilitators worldwide.

I want to thank REMO, their regional distributors and all of the local organizers who contributed to the success of the 2006 training tour!

During my tour I continued my ritual of collecting string from each student as part of the graduating ceremonies.  I collected 360 strings and ribbons from each student and merged them into the Mother-Ball that is seen at the Hawaii Playshop every year.

	Ahhhhh! The Hawaii Playshop! 11th Annual Hawaii Facilitators Playshop This is truly an international event with participants from 11 countries. We North Americans were out numbered by our international community. Participants came from Japan, Korea, Taipei, Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, UK, Norway, Canada, and the US. This diversity of culture reflects the result of all of the international facilitator trainings that I have been offering these past years.
	Hello friends, or as they say in Nottingham England " AUPMEDUCK" (what up me duck) I have finished the UK part of the tour; and will give you my report in this order; #1, One week of rhythmical/musicial alchemy with James Asher #2, The first UK Drum Circle Facilitators Conference #3, Our first weekend UK ( FRAP ). #4, The Nottingham, (as in Sherwood forrest), Community drum circle benefit for the Therapeutic Drumming Foundation.
	This was our forth Annual Scandinavian Facilitator Playshop Training. There were 33 Participants from 7 countries; Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland, and the UK. The UK participant, John Hewitt, came to the Scandinavian facilitator playshop because there was not a DCFacilitators Training in England. It was a FRAP (Facilitators Rhythmical Alchemy PLayshop), which he also attended.
	This was our fifth annual Facilitators training in Germany. They have all been promoted and produced by Mathias Reuter and Bernd Nentwig, ( lovingly called the "Professor", (Prof. Dr.-Ing.)), They own the the drumming institute called Percussion+M in Kassel Germany. The institute is a World War Two bunker with three foot cement walls. One of the few buildings left standing in this industry heavy railroad center after the war.
	India! What a intense and amazing collection of smells, sights and sounds. In that order. This was my first time in India but certainly not my first time in a third world country. I saw more brahma bulls in Bombay-Mumbi than I saw stop lights. But as I found out, stop lights are only considered as suggestions to most drivers. Motor cycles, three wheeled motorized rickshaws, mini- cabs, colorfully painted delivery trucks, and BMWs fight for every inch of road in this city. Even the white dividing lines, ( when they are there), are also considered as "Suggestions".
	This was our forth Village Music Circle program presented in Japan in the last three years. The training was held once again at the Buddhist Temple in the Village of Oshino-mura at the foot of mount Fuji.
	Hong Kong is down town Manhattan with Chinese lettering. It was great to do a full on training in this crazy city. Completing this full 2 1/2 day facilitation training playshop erased the frustration of having to do a 1/2 day teaser training here last year. Two people from that training came to this one.
	Taipei is the major city on the island of Taiwan, situated off the coast of Mainland China. There is a strong middle class there and they put a lot of focus on education from kindergarten to collage. They support the arts and music in their schools and also have privet music schools that are geared to producing many of the professional musicians found in philharmonic orchestras around the world.
	This was the second to last stop on this three month 10 country tour. Other than facilitating some corporate team building rhythm events for American President Lines in Bangkok, Thailand, Singapore was where I did one of my first drum circles in southeast Asia in 1993.
	In Kuala Lumpur everybody knows the English of their trade. Next to Singapore and the Philippines, Kuala Lumpur has the highest English Proficiency in all of Asia. You can go into Hong Kong and speak "Business English" in conferences and work shops, but to get around town on the streets you better speak Cantonese. Not only did the participants in this Malaysia Facilitators Playshop speak better English than me, ( I SPEAK AMERICAN), but they got all my jokes that are usually lost on the English.