October 11th, 2012 Newsletter

ANNOUNCEMENTS
(notes courteous of the erudite Mary Hodson)

President Jeff reminded everyone that the meeting next week will be held in the White Oaks Room.

Ed thanked everyone who volunteered to help with the EI Food Bank food repack.

Tom Hodson announced that Champaign West is selling poinsettia’s, red, pink or white for $10.   You can email him at tzhodson@gmail.com or contact Mary at maryfhodson@aol.com.

“Words in the Wind”, a fundraiser for the Book Mentor Project,  will be held at 7:30 PM on November 1, at the Faith United Methodist Church.  Tickets are $10 at the door.

Ata reminded everyone about the November 11 “Veterans One on One” dinner at The Hilton Garden Inn.   Everyone is encouraged to bring a veteran as a guest.  Tickets are $13.  Veterans are guests.

Larry says that the U of I Rotaract Club is in need of speakers.  They meet Tuesdays at 7:00 PM in Room 292 in  the Animal Science Building.   If you could do a presentation, contact Susanna Storm at IlliniRotarct@gmail.com.

Larry also noted the potential to work with the Champaign Central Interact Club to do job shadowing, resume writing assistance, and interview coaching.  Larry will follow up once he hears back from the Interact adviser, Bryan.

President Jeff announced that CU Sunrise will have an outbound RYE next year.   Her name is Elizabeth Michael.

Erick Luedtke thanked the club for the $500 donation to the Nepal Project.

PROGRAM

Leah Matchet, a member of Rotex and the U of I Rotaract Club.   As a member of Rotex, she is responsible for making presentations to Rotary Clubs about her RYE experience and counseling future and current RYE students.

Leah is from Grand Haven, Michigan.  She is a freshman, studying Global Studies with a concentration in governance and conflict resolution and East Asia.  She was an RYE to Taiwan in 2010-2011.   She thanks Rotary for changing her life.

It began with an 18 page application process that culls out the less serious.   Before leaving, she attended the Calvin Conference, the Central States conference for in and outbound exchange students.  It is held in her home district every year.

Her host family lived in a town of 150,000 close to Taipei, at the northern end of Taiwan.    They liked her so much that they immediately asked if she could stay with them the entire year.  They even paid $4,000 for her to be tutored in Chinese, five hours a day.

Leah thinks that Taiwanese students are kinder to each other than American students are to one another.   They don’t laugh at each other.   One of the differences she noticed in Taiwanese schools was that following a half hour lunch, there was a mandatory half hour nap.   Everyday after school, she came home and had tea with her host parents.

Because tourism is stressed, much is spent on restoration projects. Leah showed pictures of ornately carved Taoist and Buddhist temples.  She loved the street culture and especially the night markets.   Food was as much about appearance as taste.   Meals had many courses.   Leah’s favorite food was pig’s blood cake!   She also ate snake soup and fried chicken hearts and butt.

In Taiwan, birthdays are not important unless you are old.  So Leah was surprised when her classmates all gave her cards and presents and her host family gave her a birthday cake.

She got to experience not only the Taiwanese culture, but due to their frequent activities together, the cultures of all of the other RYEs who were in Taiwan at the same time she was.

Leah said that due to her RYE experience, she not only has friends around the world, but she likes herself a lot more, too!  The experience taught her to take chances and built her self-confidence.   “Leaving Taiwan was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Coming back was scary, like a new exchange experience.”

After she came home, Leah recruited several other exchange students from her district and her parents hosted an inbound student.  She describes it as “building peace, one exchange at a time, because you can’t demonize a country if you have a friend from there.”

Leah would one day like to be a Rotary Peace Scholar and work in the State Department.    She is studying Arabic now and plans to tackle Russian next.

—