Rotary Conference +

The Central States Rotary Conference takes place every year in Grand Rapids on the Calvin College  campus and brings together future, current, and past exchange students, as well as the parents of the future and past exchangers for one long weekend of meetings and fun.  I had already been twice before, first as an outbound student (about to leave on exchange) and as a rebound student (just returned home), so nothing was really surprising this time around.  I forgot how much I love being around exchange students though, especially the inbounds (the foreign kids currently living in their host country) and the rebounds.  Everybody at the conference is so excited to be there, it's a truly infectious atmosphere.  Norovirus would have a field day. I hope that made Ali laugh, or at least consider laughing.
Anyways, the days are filled with meetings about culture shock and reverse culture shock, breakouts where the rebounds get to brag to the outbounds about all the crazy things they did in their host countries, and inbounds give tips to outbounds about the country that they are about to be exchanging in, and inbounds and rebounds offer their advice to the Rotarians on how to improve the process for next years group.  The conference has been hosted at Calvin for 30 years, so it all runs pretty smoothly, but it still requires a 40 page booklet to figure out where you need to be at what time.  It's lucky for me that it is hosted at Calvin since that's only a 2 hour drive from Northville, as compared to the 12 hours driven by Rotarians travelling from Ontario, South Dakota, or Southern Illinois, as the Central States district encompasses all those places and everywhere in between.
My big piece was an 8 minute speech I gave during one of the general assemblies.  I'd never formally spoken in front of more than maybe 30 people before, and the auditorium there held about 1,000 people but oddly enough I wasn't very nervous about it.  I don't mind public speaking, and the fact that I'd be up on a stage with stage lighting on me meant I wouldn't be able to see anyone's face that well anyways.  I was nervous about coming up with something that would interest all the exchangers and their parents, and not just be the same old alumni speech of, "exchange is awesome, mine was the very best, my life is now perfect because of exchange, praise me for my accomplishments" as I had heard in years past.  I ended up trying to use the word exchange and breaking it apart, explaining how you need to give stuff up in order to receive other things from an exchange year (or life if we are thinking big picture).  Giving up security to gain self-confidence, giving up pride in order to integrate, giving up home friends to make friends abroad, etc. The oddest part of giving the speech itself was the completely silent audience, I felt like I couldn't read them at all as to if they were bored, interested, or confused as you might with a smaller group.  Everyone was very congratulatory afterwards though and a few exchange students came up to me later in the weekend to say they liked my speech so I think it went well.  It was a rush to get all that applause, I would definitely do something similar again.

Past the rotary weekend, I have been working out some, playing league and practicing with DK.  A good friend of mine from high school who went on a rotary exchange to Brazil when I was in Germany just came home this week from a 6 month solo trip to India, Egypt, Italy, and Denmark and it was so fun to see her again.  She is transferring to U of M in the fall and I've been talking up flywheel to her...she even played a little goaltimate this week with us and enjoyed that taste of the sport.  Her name is Grace, so we'd need to find her a nickname but she should be easy to name, because if you all think I'm ridiculous, Grace Doolittle has been one of my best mentors in goofiness. She took me to circus day camp once.  We can both almost ride unicycles now.

I leave this evening for Germany so you probably won't hear from me for the next three weeks as I won't have a computer.  I can't begin to describe how excited and emotional I am right now when I think that in just a week I will be back with my host parents who I lived with for a year.  It's been two years now since I said goodbye to them in the airport.  I can only imagine this will be a very sweet homecoming for me.

Flylove,
Frenchie

bullet points for brevity

CANADA
june 15

• sarnia: 1 gate, 2 rows of seats, 3 bags, 4 airport employees, ... i forgot how to count ..., 10 passengers. have you been on a propeller plane before? if you're hesitant about flying at all achemklinkleberg, then don't. it's cramped and bumpy. but at least you get to go up and down the stairs of the plane like barack does
• toronto: how long do you think it would take to get from terminal d to f? usually there's a tram, or the airport fans out somehow from a central point, right? no, actually, i'm going to design this airport so that travelers have to snake through from one end to another 4 times. should've faked an injury for the golf cart.

LONDON
june 16-18

• usx back in london: unexpectedly ran into some u23 teammates right between big ben and the eye. i now know that i was the good luck charm who allowed them to win gold.
• madame tussaud's wax museum: a troll / baby hand fan's disney world, until you realize that you lost all but one photo
• kate mckinnon: passed her in a parkie, stalkied her for 2 blockies, took a quickie selfie
• mamma mia: apparently meh, but i'm easily impressed
• the breakfast club: britain's take on american breakfast, aka a better yet smaller version of american breakfast. get there by 9:30 on weekends, or you'll be standing in line drowning in your drool
• passenger: found a gathering crowd, so we stayed and got a free concert. woman in front of us took a polaroid of mike (we're on a first name basis now) performing, then took many tries in capturing a photo of the polaroid with lil mike performing in the background. so naturally, i took a picture of her doing that

i need to watch the season finale of game of thrones now, but i will share my conquistador adventures later.

hola,
t-lo

p.s. we haven't started spanish language courses yet

Hello Broads!

      First things first, I think I need to summarize all of the big things that have been happening this summer since we were all last in one place.  School ended and we all jumped head first into May, I was commuting back and forth to work at my dad's office in Northville and play with flywheel in Ann Arbor.  I figured after nationals that would slow down, and it has some, but not a whole lot.  Through June I was still driving over to Ann Arbor every Tuesday for league, every Saturday for DK, and a few nights in between to play games and watch GOT with flywheel and to see Sam.
      Sleep has been at a minimum, but reading levels have been relatively high.  I made it through Born to Run, The Art of Racing in the Rain, half of Lolita (had to quit, it was too disturbing for me.  Sitting inside a pedophile's mind while he seduces a 12 year old girl? Not for me.) and I'm running through Ali's suggestion of A Manual for Cleaning Women now.  I had started another book last week that I grabbed out of a little free library in my neighborhood, but after just a couple of pages, it decided to dive out of my backpack and into an Elbel toilet as I changed for Goaltimate.  The Toilet Book has since taken up residence on the 516 dining table and Hank thinks I keep forgetting to take it back; little does she know I never plan to touch it again.  Sometimes a reputation for forgetfulness isn't such a bad thing.
      I was working in my dad's office for May and June, mostly working on this big, off site, 3 day business meeting that he hosts for the 50 or so advisers and their families from Metro Detroit for the firm every year.  He is a financial adviser with Edward Jones, so his days are spent helping people plan for retirement, saving for college, setting up wills etc.  My days were spent cropping pictures for the awards ceremonies and organizing power point slides for business meetings, planning ice breakers for the kids, and researching activities for the families to do in the Traverse City area, where the meeting took place.  I made it out to sleeping bear dunes one day after the days meetings, and in general the weekend passed very smoothly.

I earned $10 by climbing this in under 15 minutes. You can just barely see some little people down by the water for perspective. Thank you Suzie and all your bear crawls.

Running down sleeping bear

It isn't an exhilarating job, but it was also pretty stress free and it was easy to get days off for weekend excursions.  My dad stepped down at the meeting from the Regional Leader position that he had held for the last 7 years though, so he won't need to run these meetings anymore and will just focus on his own office now, in essence eliminating my job. There are already two other (much more experienced and qualified) assistants in the office who can handle all the administrative parts of the office so now I really just sit there and answer the phone occasionally when there are more than two calls coming in at once.  I think I'm going to try and stop working there and move myself back to Ann Arbor full time, but I need to pick up a new job in AA then, and I don't know if anybody will want to hire me as I'm going to be gone for 4 of the next 8 weeks.  Hmm I'll keep you all posted.
     The fun side of the summer has included a trip down to Chicago to see Of Monsters and Men and Florence and the Machine with Sam, and a trip up north for the fourth of July.  We stayed with my kooky uncle in Chicago and a few good jokes were made between his bright blue hair and Sam's general werewolf like appearance.  When we showed up to his apartment around 12:30 in the morning I called and he said he was on his bike headed home to let us in.  When he and his girlfriend showed up around 1, we went up to their sparsely furnished apartment as Danny related the story of his night to us.  Apparently they'd been out at a brewery, as Mackenzie loves beer, and Danny had been sipping his lemonade, as he doesn't drink at all*, when a bushy beard with a man's face behind it started to gesture to Danny to come over.  He figured the guy was trying to tell him to leave the pretty Japanese girl alone, as she had been having a nice time before with the guy on the stool next to her before the blue haired dude in a trench coat showed up, so Danny went over to explain she was indeed his girlfriend and he had just come late to meet her and their friend.  All the man had to say however, was to meet him outside in 15 minutes.  With a bit of a side eye, my uncle nodded and returned to his lemonade.  15 minutes passed and the man motioned for Danny to follow him outside.  Slightly apprehensive, but mostly curious, Danny followed.
"Hello, Sherlock," the beard whispered in a conspiring tone.
"What?"
"I am Moriarty and I have been searching for you for a long while."
"Oh man..."
Danny naturally knew who Sherlock and Moriarty were, and it soon became apparent that the man was only speaking in movie quotes, and that he was also starting to hit on my uncle.  Begging the chill of the evening, Danny slipped back inside after agreeing that the next time he returned to this brewery the two could talk more, at which point my call came in and he grabbed Mackenzie and they rode off into the night.
After relaying this story to us and pulling out the hand pump for the blow up bed, he strapped on his backpack, promised not to be too loud when he returned, and strode back into the night.
Typical encounter with the kooky uncle.

*So as not to mess up his creative flow. Not even coffee passes the mans lips as caffeine is a stimulant.

In the morning we rented bikes and rode in to the loop to meet Jesse Buchsbaum and Charlie Hyde (old magnum people who I'm assuming at least some of you guys know) for lunch, and I ate a ridiculously huge burrito.  Me to a chipotle burrito = Jesse to this burrito. HUGE.  We had to go and sit in Millennium Park for a little to digest after and then we picked up new bikes from a rental station and headed back out to Lincoln Park so Sam could meet with a guy who was just hired by the company where he is interning.  I was feeling anything but businessy so I took a little cat nap in the shade at a nearby park.  I figured that my spidey senses would wake me up if anybody approached me, but apparently I am not a super hero, as Sam managed to sit down inches from me for ten minutes before I woke up.  Oops.  Anywho, it was a great concert, nice to see my uncle, and fun to meet some more Michigan Ultimate alums.
     The great Northern Excursion commenced last Thursday when Sam and I headed toward the bridge after work.  It was all planned out: Check out Big Mac with it's lights, drive over to the national dark sky park on the outskirts of Mackinaw City to see some great stars, then camping at Wilderness State Park for the night.  Friday was set to include mountain biking and swimming, and spending the night at Tia's in Harbor Springs before driving down to Higgins Lake on Saturday morning to meet up with high school friends of mine for more camping until the fourth.  Well, the sky was perfect- perfectly overcast I mean.  Not a star to be seen.  It wasn't raining at least. Until we reached the campsite that is.  The tent did have a good rain fly which was very much appreciated, but only 2 stakes instead of the ten it needed to stay up.  A little improvisation led to the tent being tied to my car and staked with twigs, and it held up against the rain and wind billowing off the Straits of Mackinac quite well until 7 am when it collapsed down on us.  I slept through that naturally, but did wake up to Sam trying to fix it, at which point we decided to just start our day.  Breakfast happened at the Brutus Camp Deli, which was decorated with dead animals and lots of hand painted signs.  We order an egg scramble plate, an order of blueberry pancakes, and a steak omelet but I dropped the ball a little and we ended up having to box up half of the egg scramble.  At the register, the lady still referred to us as "hogs" though, so at least we left an impression even if we failed the mission.  On our way toward biking, we saw a sign for "America's shortest swing bridge" so naturally we had to go check it out.  It was like a little raft that was attached to a pulley system that allowed you to wheel your way over to a tiny island in the middle of the Crooked River which flowed through the town of Crooked River past the Crooked River Tavern, the Crooked River Lodge, the Crooked River Library, all the way to Crooked Lake.  **Please read that sentence in a hearty drawl**

DO NOT LEAVE ANYBODY ON THE ISLAND

I thought I could just push it.  I could not.  Pulleys are magical things.

Working the wheel

    Post Crooked River adventures, we made it to Thumb Lake which was supposed to have a nice mountain biking trail around the lake.  We never found the trail and just kept blazing our own way through the woods until we would end up in somebodies backyard.  We finally found some wooded two tracks to follow, when the chain on my bike snapped in half. Oops.  Back to the car we walked for some throwing, a dip in the lake, and the rest of the breakfast scramble.  After a quick nap, we packed up and drove over to Petoskey for dinner and as Gin would say, some dope knick knacking.

Chilling with our friend, Ignatius Petoskey

    After dinner, we showed up at Tia's to be greeted by Little Debbie holding up a hand for silence as she watched the end of a track race on TV.  Once her race finished, Lil Debs and Micheal welcomed us in and and were genuinely hospitable.  We slept out in the camper that they keep set up in the backyard for just such occasions and played pounce with Tina.  I would highly recommend a trip up there for anyone who is looking for a beautiful weekend get away.  Our morning was spent perusing the farmers market, sampling many a cheese until we finally bought the most delectable Brie.  This stuff was the gateway cheese of all gateway cheese. We next met Tia at her dad's boat shop and she slipped away for half an hour to take us on the most harrowing and exhilarating boat ride of my life.  I'm working on including a short video that shows us as we start to hit the Lake Michigan waves.  I had to put the camera away after though because then I needed two hands to hold on to the rails so as to keep Tia from throwing me out of the boat.

Captain Tiara enjoying some gateway cheese on Sam's bread

After saying our goodbyes, and promising to return one day, we headed south for Higgins.  This post is becoming exhausting so I'll sum up the rest of the weekend by saying we spent a day with Benny and a day on my high school BFF's boat and got drunk around a campfire every night.

The next big things I have coming up are the Central States Rotary Youth Exchange conference this weekend where I am giving a speech on life after exchange to about 3,000 students, parents, and volunteers and then the big family plus T-lo EuroTrip.  It also looks like I may be bringing a German friend back with me for a couple weeks.  Well I'm really supposed to be writing my speech right now so it is time to wrap this up.  More on all these future plans later.

Flylove,

Frenchie

A Haiku Summary

Hey there! I've been working on an actual detailed blog post to be published later, but until then here's a haiku summary to carry you over:

Learning about cars

Weekend adventures by train

Noodles for every meal

Also here's an bonus! awkward picture of me standing next to some deer friends.



Cheers!