September 19-22, nineteen Rotary Youth Exchange students attended the joint Inbound Student Orientation for District 7820 and District 7810. Orientation was at beautiful Camp Tidnish, the Easter Seals camp owned and operated by the Rotary Club of Amherst.We have exchange students with us this year from Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America - Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Spain; Taiwan; New Zealand; and Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil. We also have notable firsts and seconds this year:
- We have our first inbound student attending a French-language school (Raquel, from Brazil, hosted by the Rotary Club of Charlottetown and attending Ecole Francois-Buote); and we have our second one-way exchange in two years (Mauro, from Venezuela, jointly hosted by the Rotary Clubs of Dartmouth and Dartmouth East).
Rotarians from Amherst, Halifax Harbourside, Kentville, New Minas Sunrise, and Moncton West & Riverview attended, as well as a Rotex (former exchange student) and our DG Louisa Horne. This weekend serves a very important purpose – getting the students prepared for their year here and enabling them to connect as a peer group. We could not have been hosted or supported any better than we were… Thanks very much to the Rotary Club of Amherst and the Rotarians there!