I am looking forward to Changeover. It is going to be a great night with around ninety Rotarians and guests making it one of the largest we have held in recent years.
We were privileged to have two speakers on Tuesday. The first was Marie Carette our exchange student who has spent the last twelve months learning to be a Kiwi with a lovely accent. It has been our pleasure to get to know her and to spend time with her during her stay. We will miss her cheery smile and it was evident that she will miss us from the emotion she shared with us during her speech. She has been a wonderful ambassador for her family, her home town, and for France. We wish her well and look forward to her return one day.
Perhaps she will be like another of our exchange students who came back some years later with her fiancée to get our approval before they got married!
A vote of thanks to David Fels for being Marie’s counsellor. This is an important role providing guidance and security to our exchange students. This is a great program that is great for the exchange students and great for our club allowing us to see a special young people sharing their adventures and excitement with us. Eight members of Marie’s host families and the district chair of the program joined us for the evening and listened to Marie share what her time with them meant to her.
Our second speaker was our other RYLA awardee, Sean Kerr. Sean is 27 years of age and works for Rocketlab as a Composite Technician, tasked mainly with tank construction.
His time is divided between the company factory at Mangere and launch base at Mahia. He became interested in RYLA through two work colleagues who have completed the programme. Not only is he an interesting person he also has an interesting job with a fascinating Kiwi based company. I’m looking forward to hearing about his RYLA experience when he comes back to the club in a few weeks.
My thought for the day:
“When you ask me what I am doing today and I say nothing
It does not mean I am free. It means I am doing nothing!
Thank you for the opportunity to serve ‘the Rotary Club of Howick”