The President, Mrs McAleese, concluded her visit to California this week in the state capital, Sacramento, where she was greeted by hundreds of schoolchildren waving Irish flags and by a marching band and bagpipers.
Governor Gray Davis hosted a lunch for Mrs McAleese with legislators and local businesspeople at which he announced that he would be including Ireland on his intinerary when he leads a delegation to Europe later this year to promote trade between California and the EU.
At an earlier reception for the Irish community at the United Ireland Cultural Center in San Francisco, Mrs McAleese thanked the several hundred people who attended for remembering Ireland and supporting it in its struggle to find peace.
"I came here to San Francisco 27 years ago as a J1 visa student to avoid the marching season", Mrs McAleese said. "You never know where a J1 visa is going to take you", she added, referring to the visa which enables thousands of Irish students to obtain temporary work in the US each year.
She noted that she had found San Francisco to be a city in which cultural diversity was celebrated. This was a lesson she found useful for Ireland.
Speaking of her optimism about the peace process, Mrs McAleese noted that among those in the audience was a former student of hers who had lost his mother in the Omagh bombing last year. She noted that for someone like him it might seem to be too late to talk about hope, since hope would not bring his mother back.
Mrs McAleese was then escorted to the Villa Taverna restaurant, where she was guest of honour at a dinner attended by 70 guests, including members of the board of directors of the American Ireland Fund.
Mrs McAleese returned from the US yesterday.