Rotary Youth Exchange is a family affair

Rotary Youth Exchange participants Tracy, Matt, Rob and Mikaela McLean

My name is Tracy McLean (nee Mills) and in 1980, I was lucky to be chosen by the Rotary Club of East Coast Bays, Auckland, NZ (in then District 992, now 9910) where my father Don was a member for over 25 years, as a Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) student, and spent 12 months in Grahamstown, South Africa. I had one of the best years of my life and continue to keep in touch with both Rotarians and friends from that time.
 

I returned in 1981, completed my nursing degree, married Steve and we had three gorgeous children. What I didn’t realise at the time, was the ongoing impact that Rotary, and in particular RYE, would have on my life. Steve, my husband, joined Rotary in Wellington in 1994, and we then moved to Queenstown where he joined the Rotary Club of Queenstown. He has been a Rotarian for 20 years, President, and Assistant Governor of District 9980. He and I served on the District Youth Exchange Committee for 10 years, and have both received Paul Harris Fellow recognition from the Queenstown club.
 

We have hosted six RYE students ourselves, and each of our three children have embarked on a year away as a Rotary Exchange student, all sponsored by the Queenstown club. Our youngest, Mikaela (18 years-old) is currently on exchange in Sweden. Her eldest brother Matt went to Austria in 2004, and Rob followed to Denmark in 2007. I am not sure if there are many families who can boast a parent, and every child having enjoyed the joy of Rotary Youth Exchange. 
 

We took this special photo in January, when all three were at home before Mikaela left for Sweden. I am very pleased my blazer still fits! I even found my return speech in the pocket on very yellowed paper... where did 35 years go ?
 

When I was heading away, NZ students didn't have blazers, but Dad organised mine because of the long around about way I travelled due to airline sanctions with South Africa at the time. It ensured that I was recognized at airports as a Rotary Ambassador under the Youth Exchange programme. It helped me in Frankfurt, Germany on a nine hour stop over, but that is another story! I am fairly sure I was the first NZ student to don a blazer with the silver fern. So the blazer a student wears is a very special momento.
 

Matt is now a successful Journalist for TVNZ based in Auckland, Rob is following his Valuation and Property Management degree working in London, UK and Mikaela hopes to study at Victoria University in Wellington on her return. Sweden is proving a special place for her, and we know what she has in store as the year unfolds. 
 

The ongoing international connection keeps popping up. Rob was hosted in Denmark, and his host brother at the time, Rasmus, happened to have been in NZ the year before, and guess what? He was hosted by the Rotary Club of East Coast Bays which sponsored me some 30 years before. Another story I often tell, is 10 years after I came home from South Africa, my brother was in the UK on his OE and had been invited to play a game of touch rugby. He got chatting to one of the other players in the pub afterwards. It transpired that these two men, talking in a pub in London, in 1990 were my “real brother” and my “host brother”. A New Zealander and a South African who through Rotary Youth Exchange were shown how small our world can be.
 

Rotary changed my life, and I hope that I have given a little back to the organisation that opened my eyes to the world, and to the generosity of Rotarians. Our connection to the youth that pass through this organisation shows the talent and the leadership that comes from this programme. We continue to keep in touch with the students we have hosted, from all parts of the globe. 
 

I encourage Rotarians to keep this programme strong, and continue to host and sponsor students to explore the world through Rotary. I have certainly gained far more than I have given to this programme. Our family has been blessed beyond measure. Thanks Rotary.

“Sweet as …”

- By Anders Lade, Rotary International Youth Exchange Student from Denmark 
 

Everything is sweet as when you are an exchange student.

Rotary is sweet as.

New Zealand is sweet as.

And life as an exchange student is sweet as.
 

Helping with the start of a new life

I clearly remember the first time I heard someone say sweet as. I was in school and I didn’t quite know what to say or how to react. Sweet as? But I learned what it meant and now I am using it myself.
 

Exchange is about culture and about learning and using what you learn. I learned about sweet as and now I am using it myself. I am turning into a real Kiwi.
 

As an exchange student you learn new things every day. I have been a Rotary Youth Exchange student for nine months. I am from Denmark and I now live in Cromwell, New Zealand. I love all the new things I am experiencing and all the new people I meet. It is amazing and it’s all thanks to Rotary.
 

When I first came to New Zealand, I knew about Rotary. I had been to several meetings in Denmark and I liked Rotary and the things that Rotary did. What I didn’t know was that Rotary is so much more than youth exchange and so much more than what you see on the surface. Rotary is about helping other people and service above yourself.
 

I have discovered and experienced a lot of impressive things about Rotary and learned about other ways to help people. Rotary is everywhere and Rotary is in every community and it is affecting every community. I come from a Rotary club in Denmark and they didn’t do much for the local community, but they did a lot for communities in other countries in Africa.

Adrenalin junkie!

 

Rotary in Cromwell is doing so much for the local community and it helps the community and it helps people. Rotary Club of Cromwell is helping kids by giving them dictionaries and safety vests. They are helping elderly people by giving them firewood. They also do things for the environment (eg. they had a big cleanup day were they collected all garbage). That is just some of the things they are doing.
 

It is fantastic that an organisation with 1.2 million members have the same goal, the same opinions, even though they are spread out across the world.
 

I have learned that Rotary is not a hobby or something you do once a week. Rotary is a lifestyle and life vision. Rotary is a big family.
 

Every time I am taking my Rotary jacket with all my pins on I get really proud. I am proud to represent Rotary and the things it stands for and does.
 

I have done a lot of New Zealand things and as an exchange student I am pretty busy. I have shorn sheep, helped birth a lamb, milked cows, gone skydiving, walked the Milford Track, done a North Island trip and so much more. Rotary is planning some more great things for me that are going to be fun so I am looking forward to it. Sweet as!

 

Postscript
 

- by Rotary Club of Cromwell President Jean Morgan 
 

 

The Rotary Club of Cromwell’s Rotary Youth Exchange Student Anders Lade from Denmark arrived at a chilly Queenstown Airport on July 24. Cromwell club has been fortunate to host some outstanding young people in recent years and Anders is no exception. It is true that the more effort a student puts into their exchange, the more they benefit. Anders has grasped every opportunity offered and the above article written in a foreign language by Anders describes some of his New Zealand experiences to date.

 

We certainly think Anders is sweet as ...

Cover picture and story for
NZ Pacific edition of Rotary Down Under magazine
March issue

 

Rotary E-Club 9920 Francophone hosts Thailand-France Youth Exchange

Three Thai students with their French teacher and the
President of the Rotary E-Club 9920 Francophone Jean Louis Nguyen. 

As a partnership between the Lycée de l’Empéri in Salon de Provence, France and the Satit Kaset High School in Bangkok, Thailand the Rotary E-Club 9920 Francophone, helped by the Inter Country Committee France-Thailand (who has been doing this sort of exchange both ways for several years), allowed three young Thai students from Bangkok to stay three weeks with their French teacher in Salon de Provence, plus another week to visit Paris.

All three students spent those three first weeks in an 11^th grade classroom, and all three have been staying in a different host family provided by the Rotary E-Club 9920 Francophone.

They have also visited beautiful Provence with their host families and, as they have had to get around all day long speaking French, get more accustomed to the French culture.

This partnership has already been going on for seven years, and it will most probably go on in the future, as young Thai students are increasingly keener about that sort of partnership between France and Thailand.

What is a Rotary International Youth Exchange? A student's perspective

Exchange is change. Rapid, beautiful,  colourful, amazing, unexpected, overwhelming and most of all, constant change. Change in lifestyle, country, language, friends, parents, houses, and school, simply everything.

Exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore, to being someone new, but not entirely new. You are still the person you were before but you jumped into that ice cold lake. You know how it feels like to be on your own, away from home, with no one you really know. And you find out that you can actually do it.

Exchange is learning to trust, trust people, who, at first, are only names on a piece of paper, trust that they want the best for you, that they care. Trust, that you have the strength to endure a year on your own, endure a year of being apart from everything that mattered to you before. Trust that you will have friends. Trust that everything’s going to be alright. And it is seeing this trust being justified.

Exchange is thinking, all the time about everything.

Exchange is about meeting people.

Exchange is about listening to new music.

Exchange is sometimes uncomfortable.

Exchange is great. It’s feeling the connection between you and your host parents grow. It’s knowing in which cupboard the peanut butter is. Its meeting people from all over the world. It’s having a place to stay in almost every country of the world. It’s getting 5 new families. One of them being a huge group of the most awesome teenagers in the world.

It’s cooking food from your home country and not messing up. It’s seeing beautiful landscapes that you never knew existed.

Exchange is exchange students. The most amazing people in the whole wide world. Those people from everywhere who know exactly how you feel and those people who become your absolute best friends even though you only see most of them 3 or 4 times during your year. The people, who take almost an hour to say their final goodbyes to each other. Those people with the jackets full of pins. All over the world.

Exchange is falling in love with this amazing, wild, beautiful country and with your own home country.

Exchange is frustrating. Things you can’t do, things you don’t understand. Things you say, that mean the exact opposite of what you meant to say.

Exchange is about understanding.

Exchange is so unbelievable great.

Exchange is not a year in your life. It’s a life in one year.

Exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be.

Exchange is the best year of your life so far without a doubt.

Exchange is something you will never forget, something that will always be a part of you. It is something no one back at home will ever truly understand.

Exchange is growing up, realizing that everybody is the same, no matter where they’re from.

 

That there are great people and  it only depends on you, how good or bad your day is going to be or the whole year.
It is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person and learning how to explain that to your parents.

Exchange is dancing in the rain for no reason, crying without a reason and laughing at the same time. It’s turmoil of every emotion possible.

IYE is everything. And IYE is something you can’t understand unless you’ve part of it and been through it. Jump on board and enjoy the ride.

Notes from an Inbound IYE Exchange Student.2013